Way Leads on to Way
by vickrok
Summary: As the dust settles, Vic moves forward.
1. Chapter 1

Way Leads on to Way

Chapter 1

As a rule, serenity makes me nervous. Don't even get me started on yoga. And don't think I don't know that's part of the problem. You think it's cold that I don't miss him. You think I see it as all his fault. You think I can't see the truth about myself, but it's not true. I know who I am, and I know what I do, I just don't wallow in the mire of my limitations and talk about it.

When I was thirteen, my Uncle Dom died a year and a half into his fight with stomach cancer. The Moretti clan has a code of conduct outlining the acceptable reaction to all major life events. After the funeral, Aunt Maria's level of devastation did not meet the standard. She got a lot of self-righteous Italian-American shit for that. Most of it went on behind her newly widowed back, you know, in consideration of her situation and all.

Maria was an anomaly in those parts. She was built like the rest of them, wiry and tough, but she was so accepting, so zen. In all the afternoons I spent at their house during my junior high years, she never once told me to walk like a girl, and it wasn't because she knew my mom already had that base fully covered. It was because, to her, it didn't matter. It wasn't an embarrassment, or a sign of my impending lesbianism, or a stain on the Moretti family name. It was just me, and that was totally fine with her. When Dom finally died, she did cry, but not in the way that turns the world dark just to watch it. She told me she'd already done a lot of her grieving. So just maybe my failure to respond more "appropriately" is a little of that. Maybe it's just me.

Here, now, I'm barefoot at the kitchen counter waiting almost patiently for the coffee to brew, on a Monday morning of all things. The neighbor's idiot brown lab is running circles and circles around the clothes line, stirring dust up into the pale morning air and onto what I'm guessing are clean sheets. I've lived two years in this house, and I don't know that dog's name. I'll do you one better: I don't know the first or last names of the three people who live there, though I could pick them out of a line up. Today is different. I'm not wound tight and scrambling to get out the door, whether or not something big is going on at the office. There's nothing going on at the office, and there's no one to avoid at home. For for the first time in a couple of years, I can see beyond the frame of my small world, and I think I would like to meet that crazy dog in person.

In the month since we finally brought that bastard down, and Walt and Cady finally laid Martha to rest, and Henry finally got cleared of that bogus charge, and Sean said his last goodbye, life has downshifted considerably. Adrenalin had been my fuel for so long that I actually felt hung over when there was nothing left nipping at my heels. I moved some furniture around and set up the house for one. I watched all five _Rocky_ movies. I found a new running route along the dirt frontage road and through the alfalfa fields. I even called my mom. The divorce was barely a blip on the radar—I kept mine, he kept his, and I bought him out of the house. Wyoming property, especially in bum-fuck nowhere Wyoming, is surprisingly cheap comparatively.

Like I said, I know my part, but it's not what you think. I can cop to the bad choices I've made with men both in Philly and here. But I swear on my Aunt Maria's grave, it's not about Walt, it's not about sex, and it's not about choosing one man over another. Admittedly, I might have made it look like it was. I'm not going to lie: There's a feral pull. Sometimes I look at him and I swear my mouth starts to water like a cartoon guy about to dig into a steak. If I had a dime for every time I have imagined sex with him in vivid detail, I'd own this place outright. But thinking isn't doing. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not stupid, and I know fantasy and real life are two wildly different animals. I know that even if he did want me, and I'm not sure he does, it could never be casual, even in the beginning. It would be endgame, or at least expected to be. I'd have to step up like I've never stepped up before, and the idea of that has terrified me enough to back way off.

The truth is it's about what Walt Longmire represents in all of his imperfection, and all the things I should have thought about before sleeping with guys like Gorski and before getting married, but didn't. It's about the difference between Mom and Aunt Maria, and about the various ways love comes at you.

It's about learning to take care of myself.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When I walk in, Ferg's just coming out of the reading room and no one else is around. He gives me a tentative, "Hey, Vic," and I give him back a, "Hey, Ferg," and he continues on past.

He is back at the mini desk, purely by choice, and he has dropped the victim act. Granted, I did feel sorry for him when Walt blew a fuse. Just for the record, since I'm sure you're keeping one, that little desk-clearing outburst also wiped out any graphic sheriff fantasies I might have been entertaining that particular day. It's not like Walt scares me when he loses it, but sometimes I do want to poke him right in that hairy chest and say, "Dude. Chill." But, hey, look who's talking. Ferg didn't deserve to have that come down on him, but that doesn't mean he's ready. After losing a psychologically unstable prisoner then failing to warn the prisoner's target, he knew it was true.

Branch's desk, on the other hand, is totally barren, a vacant lot. A haunted vacant lot. As much as he bugged the living shit out of me at times, I miss the familiarity and the occasional camaraderie. I miss his arrogance. I miss him bringing me back burritos from across the street.

Ferg comes over to my desk, keeping a wide berth. Lately he seems to be under the impression that I might be rabid. I think we were friendly at some point, but I don't really remember.

"Hey, uh, Vic," he says with that twitch of a smile, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and tapping a pen against the side of his leg. "Uh, where's Walt?"

"What?" I hear the defensiveness in my voice, and I feel the furrow in my brow, and I know that question does not warrant this reaction.

Chill, I tell myself. Serenity now or some shit. "I just got here. How would I know where Walt is?" I ask.

He takes a step back. "Oh, okay, I mean, I just thought . . . ."

Deep breath disguised as regular breath. "Thought what, Ferg? That I might know where my boss is at 7:45 in the morning before I even get to work?"

"Oh, no, I didn't mean. Just maybe he . . . ," he added, shaking his head.

"Forget it, Ferg. Seriously, I have no idea where he is. Where's Ruby?"

"She took the day off for Addison's first day of school," he says, now on his way back to his desk, back to safety.

"Addison?" I ask, realizing too late that this is something I should know.

Ferg disapproves of my self-absorption. "Her granddaughter? The one she's got pictures of all over her desk?"

"No. Yeah. No, I knew that," I say. I'm such an asshole sometimes.

I get up to get a cup of coffee. Start this scene over.

"That sucks," I say, and Ferg turns to me looking utterly disgusted. What the hell is wrong with me? "I don't mean that sucks that Ruby is enjoying a day with her lovely granddaughter. I mean that sucks because I was going to ask you to go with me out to the pitbull mill with Animal Control."

He stares at me for a second. "Really?" he asks like I might be messing with him. And I might be.

"Yeah. I can't fight off six pitbulls and a cocker spaniel all by myself. Have you seen those Animal Control nerds?" Please don't let him be friends with those nerds.

He smiles. Thank God.

This introspection shit might end up being too much work.

Walt doesn't show up until almost noon. I've got his entrances down. Nothing mind blowingly stimulating going on here, folks, move along.

Downstairs door rattles and slams. Fluttery stomach. It might be him. The sound of boots on stairs. Prickly sweat at hairline. It is likely him. Boots on landing, slight drag of right foot between steps. Rollercoaster stomach. It's him.

Excitement. Dread. Arousal.

Be cool. Appear to be focusing on whatever the hell paper is in front of me. He's through the door—don't look up, don't smile, don't act affected.

"Ferg," he says. That voice. "Vic."

Now, look up with an, "Oh, hey." I didn't notice you there. My body is not on high alert. This is all just another whatever.

Except it isn't.

"Oh, crap," I whisper. His hair is shiny and trimmed, and he's smooth-shaven, and I just want to rub my cheek up one side of his face and down the other.

He gives me that half smile, those crinkled eyes, that full dimple.

Dear God.

"What?" he says like he knows exactly what. He turns to Ferg and back to me with that one syllable quasi-laugh, and says, "I don't want to hear it from either of you."

We're both sufficiently silenced.

He heads to his office but turns around in the doorway. He stands there looking at me for just a hair longer than is considered socially acceptable. Maybe he's lost in thought, maybe he's trying to remember what he was going to say. Or he might be looking at something behind me. I'm the pronghorn in the headlights, and I'm pretty sure he winks at me before closing the door.

I need to breathe.

Ferg turns around and snickers. "Looks like the boss has a lady-friend," he says.

I feel a mild stroke coming on.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Seeing as Absaroka County, Wyoming, has had for the past two years the highest per capita murder rate of any jurisdiction on the face of the planet, it has become a safe haven for your more run-of-the-mill criminals. In the past four weeks I have interacted with all manner of scofflaw moron, not one of whom seemed to pose a threat to my life. It's amazing what that shift in focus will do for your chi or whatever.

Sometimes now in between the cows blocking the highway and some drunk dude peeing in the alley, I look out the window down at the square, at the throbbing heart of Durant. I watch people living this particular moment of their lives, and I develop an opinion based on the three minutes I observe them smoking a cigarette on a bench or chasing after a plastic bag carried off by the wind. I'm the judge, and they don't even know they're on trial. Talk about power. This very moment will forever define them in the eyes of someone they see in the grocery store once in a while but can't place.

I imagine my Aunt Maria standing there with me, reminding me of one of her mantras: If you don't know, you can't care. She tells me this conclusion I come to in the three minutes I watch means nothing. Those three minutes aren't them. These five minutes aren't you.

After I judge them, I judge me. Same deal, pick any three minutes. You, of course, know them better than I do: There's me, arriving at Room 32, participating in the depravity, sleeping with a man I strongly suspected was married, disrespecting the badge. Or me, focused on the job, focused on myself, callously walking through the middle of a ceremonial dance at the Cheyenne beauty pageant, and for what? Or me, shamelessly coming on to my boss, suggesting I'd be willing to go there, desperately playing him for a reaction that might fill the void, wasting something that could have one day been so beautiful if I'd only been patient. Never thinking of the consequences. Those are the five minutes by which I am judged most harshly. The judgments are fair, but the minutes aren't me. Still, I can't unring the bell.

You think you and I are so different. You're wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Early afternoon I wrap up the background checks on the pitbull posse and confirm with Animal Control. Ferg is hunched over his desk with a magnifying glass examining pictures of a barn invasion robbery caught by a witness in the hay loft. Only in Wyoming.

"Four o'clock okay?" I ask, walking over to his desk, arms crossed, defensive stance. I uncross them. "Ferg?"

He looks up at me, mouth open, like he doesn't know who I am. "I know these guys," he says.

Now apparently he recognizes me, but he's confused as to why I'm here. "Ferg."

"I mean, Vic, I know these guys," he says again with different inflection like he's trying to trick me into thinking it's a whole new statement.

I grit my teeth. Then I ungrit my teeth and smile. "That's awesome, Ferg. Half the job is already done. Much easier that way."

Now it's like he knows who I am and why I'm here, but he doesn't know what the fuck my problem is.

"Or not," I offer. "Were they friends?"

"Sort of." I think he's getting ready to expand on that until he doesn't.

"Okay then. Four? O'clock?"

"For what?"

Clearly this is going to require some of that patience I've been practicing on the coffee maker.

Walt's door is open. "For what?" he calls out.

"What?" Ferg and I say in unison.

"O-kay." I drag out the "O" and the "kay" to make my point. I head for the door. "Let's try this again in half an hour, shall we?"

"Vic," Walt barks. I'm seriously about to lose my shit. He comes out into the lobby. Reluctantly, I look up at him. "Four o'clock for what?" he says like it's the fifth time he's asked me.

I roll my eyes. I know, judge away, but I'm at my limit here. "The puppy mill. Ferg's going with me. We're meeting Marquez and Stone out there."

He puts a fist on his hip and seems to be examining my face for clues. Finally he says, "I thought you and I were scheduled for that."

"Yeah, but I didn't think it actually had to be you and me specifically." He's wearing a new shirt that makes his eyes crazy blue. If I wasn't so annoyed I'd be concerned.

The delay is way too long. He might be thinking. I try to coax it out of him by providing the transition word: "So . . . ."

"Well," he says. He looks over at Ferg, then nothing.

"Seriously, Walt, you're killin' me here."

"Uh, okay," he says, scratching his head. "Okay. You and the Ferg go. No bites."

"I had no intention of biting anyone," I say, and I'm out the door.

Minus the manic energy of homicides week after week in the midst of unceasing and widespread personal crisis, we've turned into a bunch of drooling idiots. But you know what? Idiots have time. Idiots know their neighbors.

My new routine, developed expressly for the purpose of handling situations like the one that just occurred, is to walk from end to end of the business section of Main Street twice, then walk around the square five times. I say normal, everyday things to people like, "Hey, how's it going?" and, "Yes, it is a beautiful day," and, "Really. I'm a deputy sheriff."

I acknowledge the mountains and the smell of fall in the air and remind myself that I am among the fortunate. I think about Sean on the other side of the earth, and I hope he's sorting out the truth from the blame, too.

When I get back to the office Walt is gone. I'm both disappointed and relieved. Ferg has instructions to forward the phones to Walt's house.

"What? Why?" I ask, a little too pitchy, a little too panicked.

Ferg shrugs. "Where were you?" he asks.

"I went for a walk."

"That's weird," he says.

And now we're running late.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

We take Ferg's Trans-Am because, you know, I'm trying.

It's early September, late afternoon. The sun is hazy and golden, and it's hitting me right in the eyes. I feel like I'm entering heaven in one of those lame 70s afterlife movies. When we turn north, there's some reprieve from the light, which only makes me more aware of the gas fumes and the distinct smell of 40-year-old car interior. Cresting the last hill, we see the two silver monstrosities in the distance.

"That's it," I say. "You think those hangars are full of puppies?"

"I don't know. That's a lot of puppies, and they're not hangars, Vic, they're barns," Ferg says. The Sticks 101. Then he quickly adds, "But they look like hangars." He's trying, too.

Maybe an acre or more of the pasture leading up to the entrance is littered with lawn cars, erratic piles of cinder blocks and rocks, and random pieces of broken furniture. In the middle of it all is a sway-back white horse, and from this distance I can see its ribs. Here and there along the road are plywood signs with painted advertisements: "PITBULL PUPS FOR SALE HEAR," and, "NEED PROTECTION? TRY A PITT-BULL." See there? I didn't even mention the spelling and the baffling inconsistency between the two signs sitting a mere twenty feet apart.

"I hear banjos," I say, but I don't really even think it's funny. At some point in life you become an ignorant asshole for saying things like that. This, I believe, may be that point.

Ferg is taking it all in. "This might not be pretty," he says, turning left onto the rutted dirt road leading to the farmhouse. "I saw something about these places on _Oprah_."

"Yeah, that?" I say, looking at the side of his baby-face. "Be selective in citing your sources."

"Oprah? Really? Not cool?"

"Not badass," I explain. I pick my file up off the floor and check the owner's name. "We're not going to get into the barns anyway. I'm guessing we'll only get hints of the evil that lurks here."

We drive through what appears to be a large, wooden door frame and immediately the dogs are on us, barking and jumping and trotting along both sides of the car. I make eye contact with two box-headed beasts on my side, and it gives me a chill.

I casually glance down at Ferg's belt to make sure he has his firearm, and he notices.

He sounds a bit frantic when he says, "We're not going to need those are we?"

"No," I say. I hope not.

Now there are three pitbulls and some sort of herding dog on my side, and God knows how many on Ferg's. "Seven hundred pounds of pressure per square inch if those guys get hold of you," I say. "Crush your skull like a watermelon." When I look at Ferg, it appears the blood has drained from his face. I offer up my best reassuring smile and pat him on the knee as we come to a stop. "But we're good."

Marquez and Stone are standing outside their unit and seem relatively unfazed by the gang of dogs milling around by the front of the house, and the 90s grunge dude standing watch from the porch. I'm reserving judgment since he did call off the dogs when we got out of the car. Stone and Marquez both have Glocks and tazers on their belts, and they're each holding a four foot control stick. I'm wondering why the hell we had to come all the way out here to help two officers who are better armed than we are.

Marquez is a young, lanky redhead with freckles and just a hint of a lisp, and he shakes our hands. Stone is about is wide as she is tall, and she greets us with a nearly imperceptible nod. I'm not too proud to say I'm fairly certain she could kick my ass.

"Alrighty," I say, walking towards Kurt Cobain. "Let's get this party started." Could I be less original?

He makes no effort to meet me half way, just guards his porch like a scraggly blond warrior. The collie starts growling at me as I get closer, and Kurt yells, "Butch! Go!" and Butch goes.

"Mr. Van der Horn," I say. "I'm Deputy Moretti from the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department, and that's Deputy Ferguson." Ferg gives him a two-fingered salute from across the yard. "You already know Officers Marquez and Stone."

He trails his eyes from my head to my feet and back up again, but does not speak.

I pull out a picture of the dog in question. "Mr. Van der Horn, these officers need to leave here today in possession of this animal. Can you get her for us, please?"

"Nope," he says.

"Okay, then we'll need to search the property."

He turns to face me, and crosses his arms. Defensive stance. I recognize it. "Then I'll tell you what I already told them. I need to see the warrant."

"Sir," I say, looking away from him out into the pasture like Branch does, "we don't need a warrant to search your property for this dog." I look back at him. "It's exigent circumstances."

His jaw twitches. I hold up a different picture. "Dead chihuahua." And another. "Dead chihuahua in the mouth of the dog in question." And finally, "Dog in question chasing sheep on a ranch a mile and a half from your property. We also have video footage of your dog on four different occasions at two ranches showing aggression to both livestock and people. The State of Wyoming takes threats to livestock very seriously, Mr. Van der Horn."

Van der Horn's phone rings. He takes it to the end of the porch. I turn around briefly to the three other officers and mouth, "What. The. Fuck."

When he comes back he says, "She's dead."

"What?"

"The dog in question, Sunshine, is dead." I'm seriously going to punch this guy.

"Okay," I say, breathing out the red energy, breathing back in the blue. Calmly, slowly I place the pictures back in the folder.

Suddenly the pack is at attention, then running full throttle down the dirt driveway. Within seconds there's a dust cloud surrounded by dogs moving towards us. Out of it emerges the Sheriff's white Ford Bronco.

I return my attention to Van der Horn and say, "Then we're going to need the body."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When Walt gets out of the truck, he's looking a lot more like his regular self in his coat and cowboy hat. He doesn't undermine my authority by coming over to where I'm waiting for dumbass, who's back on the phone, and I appreciate that. Stone is giving Walt a matter-of-fact rundown of their previous dealings with this place when I walk up.

"Didn't think we could handle it, huh?" I say to him, knowing it's coming off as more offended than I feel.

"Vic," he says, in greeting.

I cross my arms, cock my hip, and look up at him.

"I was passing by and saw Ferg's car so I thought I'd stop," he says.

"Really? You were on your way from the county dump to Finnegan's Turkey Farm?"

Semi-smile. "Planning for Thanksgiving," he says, then looks out over the yard, first at Van der Horn, then off in the direction of the barns. "Still no dog, huh?"

I have a sudden, strong compulsion to wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck. I'd need a chair for that, but whatever.

"Apparently," I tell everyone, turning the volume way down, "the dog is now dead."

"Deputy," Van der Horn calls over to me, still not moving from his post. "He's bringing her out."

Huge, billowy clouds have formed in the time we've been here. It's all brilliant blue and white above, and warm yellow below, and nothing in between. The sky appears to slant into the rolling hills.

Maybe a minute later, an off-road Cushman cart comes barreling around the end of the farm house. I'm assuming the heavily bearded man at the wheel is Van der Horn's brother. I quickly thumb through the folder. Charles, I think. Maybe Chuck. And asshole over there is Richard. Rick. Rich. Chard maybe. The cart skids to a stop in front of us, kicking dust up into our faces.

On the flatbed is what appears to be a young grey pitbull sleeping peacefully. Chuck gets out of the cart, picks up the dog with a little grunt, walks over to me, and drops her at my feet with a sickening thud. There's a .22 bullet hole in her forehead.

Ferg pushes past me and crouches down next to her. He holds his hand over her for a second before gently lowering it onto her. Petting her. He removes his hand but doesn't stand up. "She's still warm," he says.

"Han't been dead long," Charles explains with a twang, but not one trace of snark. He puts the cart in drive, and before any of us can even think, he's making a u-turn and barreling back around the house. The gang of dogs follows silently. Dinner time.

"You're a sick fuck, Van der Horn," I snarl, and immediately Walt's hand grips my bicep. I nod and shut it. I ease my arm out of his hand and inch away from him.

Stone and Marquez put their control sticks away and start loading Sunshine into the back of their truck. Ferg watches. When I look back to the porch, Van der Horn is gone.

"That's it?" I say to no one in particular. "No citation? No threat?" I look from the ACO's to Walt to Ferg, who just appears defeated.

"There's nothing we can do," says Marquez, sounding genuinely sorry. He slams the tailgate. "We asked him to surrender the dog and he surrendered the dog."

"He killed the dog," I say.

"No law against putting a sick dog down," Walt says.

"That dog wasn't . . . ." I stop myself. I'm starting to sound hysterical. They don't like it any more than I do, but what are we going to do, order an autopsy?

Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this. "Okay," I say. "What about the puppy mill?"

It's the first time Stone has talked directly to me. "You team up with the Humane Society for that, not Animal Control." She might be giving me attitude, I'm not sure.

Walt shakes Marquez's hand and thanks Stone while Ferg and I head for his car.

We're already inside with the engine running when he comes trotting over to us and knocks on the hood. "Wait," he says, a little breathless, bending down to look at us through Ferg's open window. "I need one of you guys to go with me on quick call. Reports of a squatter out on Quail Ridge."

"I'll go, Sheriff," Ferg says, eager but still with an undercurrent of sadness.

"Well, uh, Ferg, I appreciate that, but I don't want to take you way out of your way since you've got your vehicle with you."

"So you want to take me way out of my way?" I ask, using sarcastic negativity to cover up the fact that I'm starting to sweat.

He ignores me.

"We've got it covered, Ferg. Why don't you head home from here," Walt says with a tap on the window frame. Then he turns around and heads for his truck.

"Sorry, Ferg," I say, getting out of the car. "I was pulling for you."

He smiles. "I know. Thanks, Vic. But you didn't want to have to drive this old thing anyway."

"I really, really didn't," I say, smiling back at him before slamming the door and following Walt.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It's been a while since I've ridden shotgun with Walt, and that hasn't required a whole lot of active avoidance. For the first couple of weeks after everything went down, he was occupied with the mountain of paperwork for Branch, and he spent more time with Cady and more time at home, as he should have. Only a few cases even required both of us to go, and when they did, we went. We talked, but not much. Mostly about the case at hand, or sometimes about Henry or Branch. He wasn't very aware of me during that time, and I was glad. I needed to get settled with myself and my circumstances. It's only been recently that he's come back around.

In your eyes, it's all so calculated and self-seeking where Walt is concerned. I'm that selfish ditz who only thinks about people in terms of how their situations relate to me. I won't argue that too many of those three minute trials, especially over the last year, have provided ample evidence in support of the prosecution. Your conclusions are accurate enough, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of why that happened, how I became that person. Whether you buy it or not, though, you never got the whole story. Right now, I don't know the whole story, either, but I want to know. What got me to that place where my interactions with people became largely about how I could get my own needs met? Do what you must with the information you have, but I'm giving myself a chance to set things right.

Now, as we drive towards Quail Ridge, the sun low in the sky, the temperature dropping, it feels like it used to feel. He explains the limits of the law where mass dog breeding is concerned; he gives me the background on the squatter; he points out a red-tailed hawk, then a circle of buzzards—must be something dead out there, he says. Most of the time I look out the window as the landscape transitions from rolling prairie to pine forest.

I turn to look at him when he's been silent a while, when I think he won't notice. His right arm is out-stretched on the wheel, and his left hand is on his thigh. His cheek and neck are smooth from the shave, and tidy pieces of his hair are curling up slightly from beneath his hat. Only the starched collar of the new royal blue shirt is visible above the collar of his jacket. And he smells clean, like maybe he's wearing aftershave.

I lean my head against the cool glass and turn my attention back to the outside world. It has to be for someone, and I'm scared it's going to come up. Would you believe me if I said I sincerely want him to be happy, regardless of what that means? I do. I'm just not ready to hear about it tonight.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

When we leave the paved road, I'm thinking we have to be almost there. At this point, the sun is orange and sinking fast. We turn from one dirt road onto another narrower, more rutted dirt road. For at least three miles, there has been little sign of civilization beyond barbed wire fences and a cow here and there. When we turn yet again, this time onto what may or may not have ever been intended as a road, I say, "You're shittin' me, right?"

Walt looks over at me with a slight grin, shakes his head, and says, "No."

"It's like 6 o'clock. Don't you have to be somewhere?" It's out there before I can think better of it, and immediately I'm panicking. Please don't answer that. I'm concentrating hard, I'm willing him not to say anything. Please.

"Not for a while," he says, and it's too late. It's a dagger through my chest, and suddenly I don't feel so hot. If I throw up in front of him I'm going to be pissed.

Should I ask him to pull over? On a scale from one to ten, with ten being it's-already-on-its-way-up and one being I-could-totally-eat-a-cup-of-cottage-cheese-right-now, how sure am I that hurling is a very real possibility? I decide it's only a five and I'll risk it.

Finally we stop. About a hundred yards off the road in a grove of pines is a tiny log structure, which appears from this distance to be in an advanced state of disrepair. I get out of the truck because I've reevaluated and I actually think it's more like a seven. More importantly, I need a little space right now from him and his clean-shaven new life.

I'm already walking up the embankment and headed for the cabin when he catches up to me. He's got his rifle with him.

When we're within about thirty feet, he stops and calls out, "Sheriff's department. Anyone in there?"

We wait. Nothing happens. We continue on.

He leans his rifle against the rotting rail, we draw our guns, and we check the perimeter. Finding no sign of anything, not even a Snickers wrapper or a dead bird, we return to the porch to look through the single window. The plaid curtain is threadbare and probably see-through in full daylight, but with the tree cover and at this hour, it's impossible to make-out what's going on inside.

He takes one side of the door and I take the other. To my surprise, he pulls a full sized mag light out of his jacket and turns it on. Like clowns in a Volkswagen. I reach over and check the door handle. It's unlocked. He nods, I push it open, he shines the light inside. "Sheriff's department," we both call out. Technically, I believe that one should have been mine.

The place is about 300 square feet, and it doesn't take long to determine that there is absolutely nothing inside. It doesn't even smell like anything.

"Really?" I say. "Are you kidding me?"

He seems to be avoiding eye contact.

We give it a thorough once-over, and nine and a half seconds later, we're done.

"That was so worth it," I say, returning my gun its holster and walking out onto the porch. The good news is I'm less nauseous; the bad news is I'm more annoyed.

When he comes out maybe fifteen seconds after me, I say, "Okay, let's go."

"I probably didn't need you for this," he says. He might be apologizing.

"No," I say, "you did not." I think of Henry. "So let's go"

I turn to step off the porch, and he grabs my forearm. Electricity shoots through me. I look down at his hand and up at his face. I think of the hospital, and heat spreads from my neck and up through my cheeks to my ears. My unwritten rule is to remain at least five feet away from him for this precise reason. This is way too close.

He's looking at me, looking in my eyes, and I can see the thoughts running through his head. Further delay. "Could we uh . . . ," he says, and he's still holding my arm and now my arm is burning up like my face. "Could we sit for a minute?" he says.

I'm stunned.

I don't know what to say, so I just stand there staring at him, probably with my mouth hanging open.

His hand is still there. He is holding my arm. I evaluate the situation: Would he do this with Ferg? I'm pretty sure not. Would he do it with Branch? Absolutely not. Would he do this with Ruby? I have to think for a second. Maybe. Maybe he would do this with Ruby.

"Okay," I say, trying to sound sure of myself, but I know I don't.

He lets go of my arm, steps off the porch, sits down, and slaps the boards right next to him like he thinks I'm going to sit there. I move far enough away that I think a cow could easily walk between us. Okay, yeah, whatever. Wyoming has changed my frame of reference. He definitely notices but doesn't say anything.

Clearing his throat, he takes his hat off and starts spinning it slowly in his hands. I almost ask him if he's about to propose, then I remember I don't say things like that anymore.

"You doing okay, Vic?" he asks.

This, too, is a bit shocking. "What do you mean?"

"You've been through a lot," he says.

The most obvious comeback: "So have you."

He realizes he's not getting anywhere with this line of questioning, so he takes a different approach. "This is probably going to sound," he starts, then pauses, "a little strange. But it seems like, uh, it feels like you might be avoiding me."

"Ahhh," I say. "Okay, I get it."

"Are you sorry you stayed?" he asks, and it's like he's bracing himself for something.

"No," I say, and now I'm kind of impassioned because I don't want him to think that. It matters to me that he does not think that. "God no. I'm glad I stayed. I mean, don't share this with anyone, but I really like it here." He lets out one of those one breath laughs, and I smile.

The sun is beginning to set behind him, and the pinkish orange is spreading further into the clouds.

"You miss Sean?" he asks.

"No. But I feel bad for everything I did. And didn't do. Divorce is sad."

He nods his head and it's a while before he speaks again. As the daylight fades, the crickets take the stage.

"We used to be something like friends," he says. In the evening light, it's becoming harder for me to see the expression on his face. "You told me Martha would want me to be happy. I didn't know it at the time, but for a while there, we were friends."

I can understand every word he's saying and I know what he's talking about, but for some reason, I feel like I'm missing something. "We were," I say.

"What happened?"

"Your world fell further apart. I stopped progressing. We took it for granted, I guess." I don't know how accurate this is, but right now, it's all I've got.

"So you're not avoiding me?" he says, relieved maybe.

"Oh, no," I say. "I'm definitely avoiding you."

He looks out at the sunset, scratches his head.

"Would why be a dumb question?" he asks.

"I think so."

He runs his hand over his chin, over his absent stubble.

"It looks nice," I say.

"Yeah," he says. "I feel better. In general, I mean, I'm feeling better. Didn't think that was ever going to happen."

"The beard was your albatross."

He turns to me quickly, like he's not sure I just said that. "Did you just reference Shelley."

"I thought it was Coleridge. But yeah, I did." I stand up and look down at him. "Let's go.

When we get back to the car, he steps ahead of me and opens the passenger door. I want to say, What is this, a date or something? But I control myself.

Since he doesn't move, I step past him to get in the car. He's featureless now, just a dark grey form standing there in the dusk, waiting. Then suddenly, when I'm next to the seat about to climb in, he's right behind me, not touching, but I can feel the heat radiating off his body, and I get some of that musky-leathery scent mixed with aftershave, and just briefly, I feel his breath, hot on the back of my neck. My body reacts, and I hate it.

But then I realize what's happening, and I feel pretty stupid. He's leaning down, sliding his rifle behind the seat before walking around to the other side and getting in. I tell myself to stop. Just stop.

He starts the engine, then he looks at his watch, and says, "Whoa, it's getting late. We better get moving."

I watch the dark Wyoming landscape flow past me.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The day after the pitbull offensive and Walt's unexpected and perplexing campaign for communication, I signed up for a 10-week, Tuesday evening class at the Durant Community Center. It's called "Life in Harmony: An Introduction to the Gifts of Meditation." I know, right?

So far, I've gone six times. I had to miss one session a few weeks back due to reports of a naked man marching around downtown singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and yelling at people between verses. Lucien Connally came to mind, but I should have been so lucky. This guy was much hairier, had even less business revealing himself to healthy, sighted citizens, and when engaged in direct conversation was significantly more belligerent, sexist, and bizarre than I've ever seen Lucien. Hard to imagine, I realize.

That night Ferg had gone home earlier than usual, and Walt was out on yet another one of his top secret social engagements. To be fair, I haven't actually asked about his frequent dinner plans and sickeningly polite phone conversations, so I don't know whether or not all of this is truly a secret. Nor do I want to know. I'm at peace with the mystery relationship. Or at least mostly at peace.

The meditation class is hard. In the beginning, not only did my very presence seem to disrupt the fung-shui in the entire building, but I was also the dunce of the group. We had to sit on the floor cross-legged and stay there. I had expected some sort of calisthenics to be worked into the program, something a bit more humane. When I realized what I had gotten myself into, I was understandably petrified.

To add confusion to terror, on the first day we were told, in very soothing tones over peaceful new age music, "Clear your mind." And I was like, What the hell is that supposed to mean? That's like wiping out a hard drive, and no good ever comes of that. I raised my hand, and our guide Tabatha came over to hear my concerns. She placed her eucalyptus-scented hand on my shoulder, smiled, and said, "Try to let go, Victoria."

While I can get punched hard in the face and pretty much go about the rest of my day, I get paralyzed by my emotions. But you already knew that, didn't you? My fear of mind-clearing was this: What if I'm only partially successful? What if I clear out the firearms and the police procedures and the lurid sexual fantasies, but the sadness and regret won't budge? What then?

Tabatha said, "Then you let it be." Yeah, thanks. That's really helpful.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

It's late October. More often than not now, the temperature drops below freezing during the night, and on the following mornings, I bring the step ladder out from the kitchen and scrape the window with a credit card. Sean got the ice scraper in the divorce.

Today Rufus, the brown lab next door, watches me do this through the chain link fence. "I know, Rufus," I say, stretching to reach the middle, "but I only remember I need a new one when I'm doing this shit." He wags his tail.

My fingers are numb and my ears are aching by the time I get behind the wheel. Then I remember the other problem I tend to forget during the day: The defroster isn't working right. In no time, my hot breath clouds up the window, and I can't see a thing. I wipe the glass with the sleeve of my jacket until I'm able to make out semi-identifiable shadows and shapes. Fortunately, it's one of those spectacular Durant mornings—bright sunlight and a cloudless brilliant blue sky—and I'm not completely blind like I would be on an overcast day. I drive 20 miles an hour the whole way, even out on the county road, and by the time I pull into town, I've got a caravan of eight cars behind me. These people are gutless.

When I open the door to the office, everyone is standing around in the lobby pleasantly chatting with a guy who looks like A-Rod in a white cowboy hat and tight Wranglers.

Walt holds his arm out, welcoming me into the circle and says, "Javier Cervantes, this is Deputy Vic Moretti."

I shake his hand and say, "Hey." I sound suspicious because I am.

Walt says, "Javier's on loan to us from Laramie County until we get our personnel matters settled." Our personnel matters?

"You can call me Bud," he says. No joke. There's really only one appropriate response to this, but I keep it to myself since I'm trying to cut down on my use of the f-word.

As if this were even possible, Bud's voice is Vin Diesel deep with an Antonio Banderas accent. Yeah, so I've been watching a lot of movies. I have time on my hands.

"Oh, okay," I say. "Well, welcome then."

Ferg looks like he just sucked on a lemon, but Ruby is beaming up at our loaner. He is an impressive specimen, and he's wearing a wedding ring, which is a good thing. Don't get me wrong. At least for now, my indiscriminately lustful days are behind me, but insurance never hurts.

"Well, Bud," Ruby says in her warm way, "let's get you settled."

I watch as he follows her over to Ruby's station. Impressive, indeed. When I turn towards my own desk, I notice Walt still standing right there, eyeing me like he's wondering what he just saw.

"What?" I say, but I don't wait for an answer before heading over to my desk.

Before I forget, I call the Dodge dealer in Sheridan and tell them about the defroster. Apparently it's a recall, and I'll have to leave it overnight. I make an appointment.

"Hey, Ferg," I say.

He turns around and he's still looking dejected. Poor Ferg. Everybody's always messing up his game.

"Can you pick me up from the Dodge dealer in Sheridan tomorrow after work?"

"Why?" he asks like he has absolutely zero interest in why.

"Defroster's out and they need it for a full day. Or Friday morning early is okay."

"Yeah," he says unenthusiastically.

"Yeah which?"

"Either," he says.

"Okay, tomorrow after work then."

He doesn't respond.

I walk over to Walt's office and knock on the open door. He's at his desk reading something and he closes the folder when he sees me.

"Can I talk to you?" I say, and I get this flashback to more angst-ridden days.

Appearing concerned, he says, "Sure. Sit down."

"No," I say, embarrassed, "it's not like that."

"You can still sit down," he says. I never sit down anymore unless remaining standing would make me seem uncooperative. Right now that's not the case so I stand.

"I'm good," I say. "This'll just take a second."

His hair is growing longer again, but it still looks clean and shiny. He has better hair than I do. Truth be told, I'd like to run my hands through that hair, breathe in the scent of it. Almost two months later, he is still clean shaven. I imagine walking over there right now and sitting on his lap facing him, pulling his shirttails out of his jeans and running my hand up his ribs while I lightly kiss his neck, his jawline.

"Vic," he says.

I'm flustered. I'm ashamed. My face flushes.

Shaking my head, I say, "Sorry. My truck needs to go in for a recall on the defroster. They're going to take care of it on Friday, and I'll pick it up Saturday before work."

"You're off Friday," he says.

"I know. I don't need it when I'm off, I need it when I'm here."

"Okay," he says, leaning back in his chair, thinking like there's actually something to think about.

"Ferg's going to follow me up there to drop it off tomorrow night after work, and he'll pick me up Saturday morning to go get it."

He's still thinking. "Okay," he says.

"Okay then."

A bit frazzled, I head back to my desk.

"Vic," he barks. "Come here for a second." I was just there.

He actually comes out, and says, "Ferg, don't worry about picking Vic up in Sheridan tomorrow. I need you here. I'll take care of it."

Think fast. "You're supposed to delegate stuff like this, Walt," I say. "You're the sheriff." No shit.

"I am delegating. I'm delegating Ferg to stay here," he says, and he walks back into his office and closes the door.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Thursday we do our semi-annual round-up. I spend the morning printing up the warrants and organizing them by area and gravity so we can get started at noon when Ferg and Bud arrive for their later shifts. In Absaroka County, the round-up generally consists of knocking on five doors and visiting a couple of people at work. We haul them in for failing to appear on traffic violations and random small-time misdemeanors. Everyone involved is very civil about the whole thing. They either pay or make arrangements to pay, then we drive them home.

Bud is with me, and Ferg is with Walt, and we each take half. By 4:00, Bud and I have brought in and returned two guys and one woman, and we have one left, a drug charge way out in the far-reaches of the county.

It's nearly 5:00 by the time we get there, and we both know immediately that we're not getting far with this one. There's a combination barbed-wire, wood, and chain link fence surrounding a couple of acres. Hanging on it at intervals on all sides visible are unwelcoming signs: NO TRESSPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT, BEWARE OF DOGS, OCCUPANT IS ARMED, SMILE! YOU'RE ON CAMERA. The run-down, stained stucco house is set back from the road and spliced onto a rusty trailer, and all the windows are blacked out.

"I guess we better call Walt," Bud says in his Cuban cowboy drawl.

"Yup," I say, resigned to the fact that this is now going to be a total pain in the ass. I get on the radio.

We wait on the other side of the road about a half mile up, just in case someone is stupid enough to take pot shots from inside a pressure cooker. A pitbull, probably from Van der Horn's establishment, is manically barking and running back and forth along two sides of the fence, weaving in and out of piles upon piles of trash, mostly plastic bottles and cardboard packaging. Not one piece of vegetation on that property save for an oak in the front yard appears to be living.

"Fucked up tweekers," Bud says. I'm starting to appreciate him as more than just an art form.

Since we've got time on our hands, Bud shows me pictures of his family. The newest addition, Julio, is a two month old with big blue eyes, long lashes, and olive skin.

"Cute kid," I say, and I mean it, which is weird.

Turns out Julio is only the latest and not necessarily the last in a brood of five, three girls and two boys.

"And this is Darika," he says, proudly showing me a picture of his wife. She's beautiful.

"Cheyenne?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. "We took this job so we could be near her family, at least for a while."

It occurs to me that Bud has plans to stay as long as we'll have him, and I think I'm okay with that if bringing Branch back isn't an option.

Half an hour later, Walt and Ferg pull up behind us. We get out of the truck and meet them between the two vehicles. A fierce, cold afternoon wind is howling across the plains from the direction of the house. I wrap my arms around myself.

"That's strong," Ferg says, sniffing the acetone air, hands deep in his pockets.

"Yeah," I say, "and it's much worse out in front."

"Well," Walt says. "Guess there's not much we can do right now." He stands there, hand on hip, looking across at the property, processing the information. He's the only one of us who doesn't appear to be freezing half to death. "We'll have to call in the response team from Cheyenne."

I'm always a little disappointed when we can't follow through on a call ourselves, but seeing as I'm not in the mood to get blown to pieces in a chemical explosion, I can accept it.

"You know those guys, Bud?" Walt asks.

Bud nods. "I've worked with them."

"Can you give them a call, get them out here as soon as possible?"

"Sure, Sheriff," Bud says. He takes out his phone and walks up the road behind the Bronco.

I sneak a look at my phone. It's 5:45. The dealership closes at 7:00.

Bud is back a few minutes later. "They'll be out in the morning," he says.

"That's a three hour drive," I say, not really sure what point I'm trying to make. I'm a bit distracted.

"Late morning," Bud says.

We look at Walt, waiting for direction.

He squints out towards the house again. "They haven't blown themselves up yet," he says. "Might as well leave them to it for one more day."

Back at the office, I type up a report for the clan lab team while Bud, Ferg, and Walt work out the logistics of the next morning. When I finish, the street lights around the square are on. If I leave right now, I might get there by 7:00, and that's if I don't stop to go to the bathroom and change my clothes. I'm not a big fan of parading around in uniform when I'm off duty, especially in another county.

I walk into Walt's office, interrupting their meeting. All three look up at me. "Hey, um, Walt," I say. "I'll reschedule that appointment at the dealership. We've got a lot going on right now."

He looks at his watch for longer than it takes to read the time, then back up at me, like he's trying to orient himself.

"They close at 7:00," I say.

"You don't have to get there by closing," he says. "Don't you just put the key through the night drop? In one of those envelopes?"

Honestly, I'm not sure. "I don't know. I haven't done it before."

"You do," he says. "You can drop it off at midnight if you want to."

"I don't really want to," I say. I understand that's not the point, but for some reason I'm nervous.

His eyes are soft and warm, and he smiles, like he's trying to comfort me. "I'll meet you up there at 7:30. Let me just wrap things up with these guys, and I'll be there."

That gives me butterflies, which in turn makes me feel self-conscious, and I start to blush. I'm still such an idiot.

Ferg and Bud are still consumed with their planning, and neither seems to be even remotely aware of me or Walt or the conversation we're having.

"Okay, seven-thirty," I say, and I turn away quickly so he won't see me smile.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

After taking a shower and changing into a strategically planned but casual outfit, I drive up to Sheridan. It's only a little after 7:00 when I pull out onto the highway, but it's a moonless night and pitch dark. The Dodge dealer, on the other hand, is lit up like a stadium. I make it there close to 7:30, and although the service department is closed, there are two salesmen out in the yard who wave at me. One of them, a sort of New Jersey guido type in what appears to be an expensive suit, comes over and says, "Can I help you with something, officer?" He makes no attempt to conceal the fact that he's checking me out.

"Just dropping the truck off," I say, scanning the service area, trying to figure out how this works.

"Here," he says, putting his hand on my lower back and guiding me to a plastic box attached to the wall, "let me help you."

He keeps his eyes on mine as he pulls an envelope out of the box and a pen out of the chest pocket of his jacket. "Sabastian," he says.

I think he means that's his name, so I say, "Nice to meet you."

"And you are?" he asks, opening the pen.

"Vic," I say.

"Vic?" he asks and I think he's mocking me.

"Yes," I say. "Vic."

He moves over to stand right next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and he explains the envelope like I'm some kind of moron. Or woman. His face is uncomfortably close to mine, and I'm getting a contact buzz from his Drakkar Noir.

"Great," I say, taking the pen and the envelope from him and walking over to the closed service window counter to fill in the information. When I'm done, I hand him the pen, and I move the truck to one of the designated spaces. He's still there when I lock up, put the key in the envelope, and slip the envelope through the slot.

He escorts me out to the front of the building, still very close. "You married, Vic?" he asks.

"I am," I say.

Just then Walt pulls in and I don't have the space to be nervous because I'm really relieved.

"That him?" he asks.

"Yup, that's him," I say. "Thanks for your help."

"Anytime, baby," he says, and he definitely means it as an insult.

I open the door to the Bronco and get in. It's warm inside, and it smells like him, leathery and grainy and soapy. His hair is wet, and I notice he's wearing the royal blue shirt under his leather jacket. Oh, crap. Couldn't he have gotten ready for his date after picking me up?

"What was that?" he asks.

"That was Sabastian," I say.

"Was he bothering you?" he asks.

"No," I say, putting on my seatbelt. "He's fine."

We get back out onto the dark highway heading towards Durant, and he tells me what they have planned for dealing with the meth lab in the morning.

"You need me to come in?" I ask, but my heart's not in it.

"No. We've got it covered," he says.

"Back in Philly, a couple of rookie cops ran across one of those places and didn't recognize the signs." I'm just filling air. It's like I'm hearing myself talk from the outside. I'm floating, and my pulse is thumping hard in my temples. "It was booby trapped. Maimed them both. Careers ended before they started."

There's a tugging in my throat, and I'm close to crying, and I'm mad at myself for being so weak. I turn as far away from him as I can, watch the darkness pass.

When we're maybe ten miles outside of town, and I'm telling myself I just have to survive ten more minutes of this, he reaches over in the dark to where my hand is resting on the seat next to me, and he brushes his fingers lightly, slowly over mine, just once, before returning his hand to the wheel.

I look at him, his darkened profile. No hat. He takes his eyes off the road for just a second. It's a serious expression he gives me, no acknowledgment of what he did, and now I'm wondering if he did do it, or maybe I imagined it.

"Hey, uh, Vic," he says. "Do you want to get a drink? With me, I mean. Now."

Re-calculating. Re-calculating.

No, I'm thinking. The answer is no.

But I say, "Sure," and he takes the next turn-off towards the Red Pony.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

It's been well over two months since I've seen Henry, and when we walk in, he comes around the bar and gives me a hug.

No one ever hugs me. Or at least it's very rare. In fact, I may give off the impression that I don't like to be hugged, or worse yet, that I'm not particularly huggable. But neither is true given the right circumstances, and right now with my emotions all over the place and nothing to distract me from them, I need this one desperately.

"I have not seen you," Henry says, holding me now at arms' length and gleaming at me, "since the day Walt punched you." He gives Walt a disapproving look.

"Come on, Henry," Walt says shaking his head. "Don't bring that up." He actually sounds serious.

"It is good to see you," he says. "What can I get you two?"

Walt looks at me. "Beer?"

"Sure," I say.

"Two Raniers," he calls over to Henry, who has gone back around the bar to help another customer.

Just then, the door to Henry's office opens, and out walks, of all people, Tabatha. I try to surreptitiously hide behind Walt, but it's too late, she's seen me.

"Victoria?" she says flowing over to us, all elongated muscle and warmhearted light. "Is that you?" And before I know it, I am enveloped in my second hug of the evening, and this one is even more sincere and more filled with love that I start feeling like I might tear up again.

She lets me go, but holds onto my hand. With the other hand she squeezes Walt's arm and says, "Hi, honey."

This is worse than I could have imagined. Is it Tabatha?

He's watching, absorbing it all as Tabatha beams at me and says, "It's always such a pleasure to see you. You know," she says in her country girl accent, looking up at Walt, "this gal is one of my favorite students. I'm not supposed to say that, but I tell you. I've never seen a student try so hard."

I'm thinking she's got me mixed up with someone else.

"That's Vic for you," Walt says, and I'm seriously wondering what the hell kind of crazy dream I've landed in. I'm also mortified that Walt now clearly knows that I am involved in some kind of formal self-improvement.

Henry puts the beers down in front of Walt, then steps up on something behind the bar, leans over, and wraps his arm around Tabatha's willowy waist as he kisses her on the cheek.

Thank God.

"You two know each other," he says as a statement, not a question.

She nuzzles him before he steps back down on his side of the bar.

Walt grabs our beers, and I follow him to a table in the corner.

We sit down, and he's looking at me like he's trying to figure something out. "I don't want to hear it," I say, and he laughs his limited laugh.

"Okay," he says.

I take a sip, or maybe a swig, of my beer and say, "I haven't had a drink in a really long time."

"Me either," he says, and I'm surprised. Dry dates? Really?

"I haven't done a whole lot of anything I used to do," I say before realizing I'm probably opening up a can of worms.

"You're doing some sort of penance." He says it like it's a fact.

"Doesn't that mean I'm punishing myself?"

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know. If anyone would recognize that, I guess it'd be you," I say, and I know there's a bite in my tone.

"I didn't mean to criticize you," he says. He gives me that warm look again. He points at my beer, "You want another one?"

While he's gone, I finish my beer and try to chill. Part of the problem I'm having is I have no idea what's happening, and if I've learned anything about myself in the past few months, it's that I don't handle purgatory well at all.

When he comes back, he's already finished half of his second beer. His face is a bit flushed, and his eyes look even more brilliant blue than they did earlier. I catch myself looking at his lips, and quickly look away.

"Can I ask you something?" he says in a much lower volume than he was using earlier. "Again."

"Okay," I say, though the idea that this could be a return to our phantom squatter conversation scares me.

"Why have you shut me out?"

Even though I pretty much knew it was coming, it knocks the wind out of me.

"I'm not shutting you out," I say, but it's an unfair answer. For all intents and purposes, that's exactly what I'm doing.

"All right," I say. "Maybe I am, but it's not like that."

"Like what? Like you don't want to talk to me, or be in the same room with me, or look at me?" I've heard pain in his voice before, but not this kind of pain. Since I've known him, all of his hurt has been huge, the kind of hurt you rage against and break things over. This is much more delicate.

"Is that what you think?"

I consider putting my hand on his, or hugging him, but I can't. "That's not it at all," I say.

"Then what is it?"

"I've made too many mistakes, made some unbelievably bad choices, and I need to set some of them right," I say. "I need to be a better person."

"So you're protecting me from you," he says, and it hits me that that might be exactly what I'm doing. It sounds ridiculous.

"Plus, Walt, you have a girlfriend, and I can't do that again."

He's staring at me now, like he just got slapped in the face. Henry brings over two more beers, but he seems to sense something and just says, "Enjoy," and goes back to the bar.

"What?" Walt says, baffled. "What girlfriend? Not Lizzie?"

"Holy shit. Is it Lizzie?" I'm floored.

He sits up, getting redder in the face. "Is what Lizzie?" he says, louder.

He has absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. I need to start digging myself out of this hole at some point soon.

"Then what's with the shaving and the haircut and the new clothes? Who did you do that for?" I ask.

That definitely didn't start the digging.

He's sort of glaring at me now, and I realize he is genuinely angry with me. He lowers his voice again. "Everybody, for three years, kept telling me I needed to take care of myself. That was the big issue with Cady. Dad, you have to take care of yourself. Look at you, look at this place. Take care of yourself."

He's totally exasperated, frustrated. His eyes are misty, and I don't want to embarrass him, but I don't want to look away from him, either. "Who did I do it for?" he says. "I did it for me. Wasn't that what I was supposed to do?"

The place is virtually empty except for Henry and Tabatha over at the bar, some cowboys playing pool, and three young guys who don't look like they're from around here eating hamburgers.

I move my chair closer to his and I take his hand. "I am so sorry, Walt," I say. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I would never mean to hurt you."

"Why didn't you just ask me?" he says, letting go of my hand and wiping his eyes.

"I was scared of the answer."

He shakes his head. "What a mess," he says.

It's awkward now. We both drink our beers in silence for a few minutes until I realize I might as well take the opportunity to get the demon out of me.

"I'm also sorry about Arizona," I say.

He may or may not know what I'm talking about. It's hard to tell.

After a painfully long pause he says, "You mean for hitting on me in Arizona?" He's looking down at the table.

I'm shocked and I'm ashamed. Until now, I wasn't even sure he saw it that way.

"You didn't do a very good job," he says. "I think you can do better." I'm not sure if he's throwing it back in my face or flirting with me.

The lines seem to be perpetually blurred.

"Thank you," I say. "But I'm serious. It was dysfunctional, selfish behavior."

"Kind of like deciding to commit murder to deal with a loved one's murder. Screw everyone else. I'm getting revenge so I can feel better."

"Right," I say. "Like that. Or like trashing your office."

"Don't help me," he says and laughs, looking up at me, finally.

"For the record," he says, "I didn't believe you really wanted me that night. I knew you wanted something, but I didn't think it was me."

"You're right," I say. "It wasn't. Not that night."


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

It takes a while, but we do manage to ease back into some normal conversation and finish our drinks. After three beers, I'm feeling fuzzy and slightly loopy, so I ask him if he's okay to drive.

"I weigh two hundred pounds," he says. "Three beers in ninety minutes puts me at about a .03." He stands up and puts his jacket on. "You, however, are intoxicated," he teases.

"I shouldn't drive," I say.

"You aren't driving," he says. "Your truck's in Sheridan."

We say goodnight to Henry and Tabatha, and neither of them seems to have any interest in what's going on with us, and I love them both for it.

It's freezing outside. Walt opens the door for me, and I say, "I'm capable of opening the door myself." I might sound a little slurry.

He ignores me.

Before I step in, I say, "You don't have to put your rifle away this time?"

The way he smiles, I'm certain he knows what I'm talking about. Maybe I didn't need to feel so stupid after all.

"I do," he says before closing the door, "but I'm saving it for later."

I feel my face flush. Did he mean that the way it sounded? Dear God.

When we pull up in front of the house, I realize I forgot to turn on the front walkway light when I left. Or any lights, for that matter, so it's completely dark leading up to the door.

"You should put your lights on timers," he says. "Especially now." He means now that I'm living alone, but he doesn't say it.

"I really should." I'm trying to figure out how to unclasp my seat belt. That is, unclasp the seat belt I have unclasped hundreds of times in the past two and a half years. Walt does it for me, and he touches my hand in the process, maybe on purpose, and my heart drops into my stomach.

"Despite evidence to the contrary, I'm not drunk," I say then I get out of the car in a coordinated way to prove it. "But if I am, I really don't understand why. I had three beers."

"You haven't drank in a while and you're thinner," he says, walking around to my side.

I look up at him, and instinctively, I back away a couple of steps then hope he didn't notice. "Am I?" I say, but I'm not really even asking him, I'm just asking.

"Looks like it," he says. He's been looking.

The right side of his face is illuminated slightly from Rufus' security light, but otherwise, we're standing there in the dark.

"You don't have to walk me to the door," I say.

"It's a requirement," he says. "Absaroka County code." This worries me.

I take my keys out of my pocket and make sure I'm holding the right one before heading down the walkway into deeper darkness. My cell phone has a flashlight in it somewhere, but that sounds way too complicated right now.

He follows me to the door, and he's giving me space, and I'm thinking maybe I'm panicking for nothing. I feel for the lock with my finger, then slide the key in.

"Vic," he says, his voice a rumble. "Wait."

He's closer now, I feel him. I put my head against the door in the dark. "What?" I say.

"Turn around," he says.

"No," I say, not because I don't want to, but because I want to so badly I'm afraid the force of it will destroy me.

"Please," he says.

I say, "I can't," but then I do.

I shrink back against the door so as not to make contact with his body in the process, but that only makes him move closer.

Then his hand is a feather on my cheek, and he's running his thumb slowly over my bottom lip. And before I have time to process that move, his face is close, and I can smell him, and that gets everything liquid in me flowing faster, and his lips, warm and impossibly soft, are where his thumb was, barely touching but definitely touching my bottom lip only, and I'm almost certain I feel his tongue before he pulls back, and I'm thinking where the hell did a guy like this learn a move like that?

He whispers, "Can I kiss you, Vic?" and he's so close, our noses are a fraction of a millimeter apart. It's thirty-nine degrees out and I'm sweating.

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing, and he does nothing. I'm frozen white noise and urgency.

Then I'm moving again, and my hand is on his chest, grabbing the front of his shirt, pulling him across the fraction of a millimeter, and first my lips make contact with the side of his nose, then his chin, and I have to put my hands up to his face, feel for his lips, and when I find them, I'm on them, and it's warm and its soft, and this time it's wet because our mouths are open and he knows what he's doing, after all this wondering, what if he doesn't know how, what if he's awkward about it, but he's not, he definitely knows, and it's getting deeper and hotter and wetter, and somehow my arms are around him and his are around me, and my hand is on his ass, then his is on mine, and it's big—his hand, I mean—and he moves even closer to me until his body is flush and pressed against me and I'm backed up against the door, and I feel the unmistakable firmness against my hip bone and I know if it doesn't stop now it won't stop, so I gently push him back and try to catch my breath, and unscramble my brain.

I can't see much of him, but I can hear him breathing heavily. I say, "That was amazing."

"It was." He steps closer again.

"But it didn't happen. Not yet."

He runs his thumb across my bottom lip again and says, "Okay."

* * *

**Hey Everyone,**

**Thanks for being so interested and supportive. Unfortunately, this is the last one for a while as my job starts back up next week and I'm expected to take it seriously. There will definitely be more, and I'll try not to make you wait too long.**


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

My memory of that day is patchy and visceral. I know what happened in a general sense because it gave rise to so many moments that came after. It was those moments that put the label on me, the label you toss around so freely and that, until now, I haven't had sense enough to try to shed.

It was one of those damp, still, winter days, freshman year. Jimmy Agosti, surrounded by his boys, said something to me in the hall after school. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I do know it zeroed in on my ongoing failure to assimilate into teenage culture. I was forever on the periphery of high school society, and I knew it came down to some fundamental flaw in me. I believed what Jimmy said, whatever it was. He had said it before, but this time I snapped.

The rage bubbled up from the depths of me and boiled over. You don't have to be a genius to figure out it wasn't even about Jimmy; Jimmy just lit the burner.

I tried to stop the eruption. The attempt blurred my vision. I remember my fist striking the side of his neck and being surprised that my knuckles hurt. They laughed. My second punch drew blood, but I don't remember where I hit him or how much blood there was. I just know there was blood because that's what Mr. Cordell, the vice principal, reported to my mother; that was the proof that the blame was at the very least equal.

Jimmy was boxer quick. He delivered three short, powerful jabs to my nose, my mouth, and my left eye. His fans went wild. I don't even remember how the fight ended, I just remember being half-lifted off my feet by a hall monitor's hand shoved up into my armpit, and ushered through the crowd to Cordell, who dealt with me in a disgusted, almost embarrassed way while he contrived some back-slapping male-solidarity with Jimmy. In his administrative eyes, I was a freak, the likes of which he'd obviously seen before. It's a certain type of girl that will fight with a boy. Not his type, apparently.

I arrived home at dusk. I had cleaned myself up as best I could in the bathroom at school, but there was still blood down my shirt, my lip was split, and my eye was swollen.

My mother was standing at the kitchen sink, her eyes fixed on something in the yard, no lights on. She had to have heard the front door close and my footsteps coming down the hardwood hall, but she didn't turn around. I stood in the doorway for a long time, maybe a minute or even longer, watching her watch something.

"Mom," I said, my voice echoing in the gray kitchen. She didn't turn around.

I waited, a heaviness building in me. "Mom. I'm home."

Still, she didn't turn. I walked over and put my lunch bag on the kitchen table and turned to leave. Just then she said, without turning towards me, "I can't help you anymore, Victoria."

I stopped. I listened. I couldn't recall what the help had been, but clearly it hadn't worked.

"This behavior will ruin you," she said. "Boys don't like girls who act like this."

Before you start getting all judgmental on my mom's ass, too, let me say, she was a good mom. She is a good mom. She had her opinions that she saw as facts, like most people do. She believed that life had to be a certain way. There was a set of possible successful outcomes, and anything that lay outside that set was a ticket to misery. A successful girl was popular with alpha boys; there were no variations on that one. I mean, come on. How many of your moms believed the same thing? How many still do? If that was success, in her eyes, she'd failed big time with me.

I don't minimize the experience she had with all this. I was a disappointment, a negative reflection on her own ability to assimilate.

I just said, "Okay." I tried not to sound or look wounded right then or at any point after. I absorbed the idea that at fourteen years old, it was almost over for me.

But I wasn't going down without a fight.

The next school day, after a three day suspension and the weekend, I found Jimmy at lunchtime, out near the football field. I knew I had a body that interested boys, even if nothing else about me did. That day I dressed for it. I told Jimmy I was sorry and put on the weak act—you know the one. He took me under the bleachers, and we made out for twenty minutes. He got all the way up my shirt and part way down my pants before the bell rang. Then he proceeded to ignore me until a few weeks later when he wanted to cop another feel. I accepted that, too. Becoming loveable again required some sacrifice.

Sure, it's a pathetic story, but not so unusual. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that some of you out there casting stones made out with a boy, let him touch you, or later, fucked some guy because you desperately wanted your mother to love you. I'm not saying it's not completely messed up thinking; I'm just saying it might be more normal than the flawless among us realize.

Gorski in 32? Just a more complex version of the bleachers. If a superior officer with a lot to lose, and maybe even a wife wants to have degrading sex with me in secret, I really must be desirable. And Sean? That's a little different, but sadly the same idea: Look, Mom. A cute, normal, more beta than alpha guy with a pretty good job wants to marry me. I must be sort of okay.

Did any of my whoring around or ill-advised life choices get me more love from my mother? No. Ironically, the most love I've gotten from her has been within the past two months when I have essentially said without a trace of self-pity, I'm sorry I've been such a disappointment, but this is who I am, and I'd like to know you anyway.

She actually seems to like me better. She sent me oatmeal cookies to eat while I binge watch Netflix. Go figure.

So what's my point?

Last night, I had Walt Longmire's tongue in my mouth and his hands on my body, in the dark, no less. I requested that we keep it a secret, even from ourselves.

It looks familiar, I'll give you that. It looks like what I do. But it isn't.

For the first time in my life, sexual contact with a man had nothing to do with trying to prove anything to anyone, including myself. I had been avoiding it because, really, it looked like it was coming, and because I wanted to know with 100% certainty that my intentions were true when it did.

I didn't get to 100%. He was more intense and more determined than I would have expected. But I was sure enough.

That, last night, giving in to him, was about one thing only: The core of me, my heart, maybe my soul, whatever the hell you want to call it, just ached to be close to him.

That's a foreign feeling for me. An incredible, humbling, foreign feeling.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

In the morning I'm wired, even after a long night of fitful, feverish sleep. It had not occurred to me that the already unbearable sexual tension could be wound even tighter. To remain reasonably sane, my primary objective for the morning is to burn off some of the excess energy darting around in me.

I pick up Rufus from his yard. He's staying with me for a week while his parents Maggie and Duke, and their unemployed son Drake go to Rapid City to visit the older sibling, a girl, who works there for some insurance company. I think she's married.

"Have you put on weight?" I ask Rufus as I get dressed for my run. "You've kind of got that over-stuffed sausage thing going on."

He looks up at me and wags.

"That means you're fat," I say. His tail moves faster.

We run along the frontage road and through the fields. For a chunker, he keeps up really well.

The air is crisp and blue, and a layer of frost sparkles in the morning sun. With my engine running the way it has been all morning, my pace is up. I'm flying through the open spaces, like dream-running where you never get tired. I should have timed myself.

In the afternoon, we curl up together on the couch with _Orange is the New Black_. Watching it with Rufus is not nearly as uncomfortable as it might be with almost anyone else because, you know, brown labs aren't that smart. He has no reaction whatsoever to the sex scenes, even the gnarly ones. But I can't help wondering if I could watch this with Walt. I'm thinking I couldn't, and I'm not sure how much that matters.

At some point, I doze off, and I'm startled out of my sleep by my phone ringing. Rufus is startled, too, and he steps on my stomach as he's leaping from the couch. This doubles me over, and as the second set of ringing starts, I hear the phone drop from somewhere on the couch onto the floor. Not yet recovered from the seventy-five pounds of concentrated pressure on my abdomen, I get down on my hands and knees to search for the phone. By the time I find it under the coffee table, it has stopped ringing.

I fish it out, but I don't look at it because, for some reason, I'm nervous. All day I've been trying not to expect him to call, but all day I've believed he would. I'm not saying I was anticipating a sensitive how-are-you-feeling-after-last-night call, but he was supposed to take me back to get my truck. I think. Earlier this afternoon, however, I did realize I couldn't recall a discussion about it.

Back on the couch, I look at the screen. Sheriff's Department. Just then, the phone vibrates and a voicemail comes through. I freeze. I put it on the coffee table and stare at it for a minute or two, then I pick it up again. Rufus is sitting by the TV, watching me. He might think it's time to eat.

I reach over and play the voicemail on speaker. When I hear Ferg's voice, I have an involuntary muscle spasm in my esophagus. These frequent, intense physical responses can't be good for me.

In the blustery late afternoon, I go for another run, this time without the dog. I try to banish all thoughts of him and why he didn't call. I remind myself that it means nothing, that I'm really not the type of woman who needs someone to call, that I pretty much told him I didn't want him to. Walt asked Ferg to pick me up, that's all. He was going to be busy. In fact, he was going to be so busy that he was already too busy to call me to tell me he was busy and Ferg would be picking me up.

It's all good. And even if it isn't, I'm committed to acting like it is.

The next morning, on our way up to Sheridan in the bitchin Trans Am, Ferg is sort of wringing the steering wheel in his hands, white knuckles and all that.

"What's going on?" I ask.

He glances over at me and shakes his head, pressing his lips together so his dimples show. "I screwed up, Vic."

I'm used to a measure of neurosis in Ferg, so I'm not too worried. "No you didn't. What happened?"

"I visited my grandma a couple days ago," he says.

"Okay," I say. "So far no problem."

"My cousins?"

"The barn raiders?" I ask.

"Yeah, those guys. We have the same grandma."

After their little crime spree back in September, the two Fergusons, who have a different last name I can't recall, fled the county. A warrant was issued, and they were spotted in Casper, but after that, there hadn't been any word of them. It was out of our county so it was out of our hands.

"This is all good so far, Ferg," I say, getting a little impatient.

Breathe. Frosty fields out the window. Deep yellow sun low in the eastern sky. Soft morning light.

"But you should try to spit it out before we get to Sheridan," I say like it's a totally relaxed, friendly bit of advice.

"My grandma told me they're back. She's pretty old, so I don't know if she's getting senile or what, but she told me, and she told me where they are, like she forgot where I work."

"How old is she?"

"Seventy-five," he says.

"Okay, that's not really all that old. She might have let it slip on purpose."

"Why would she do that?"

"Uh, maybe because those assholes, shared DNA or not, have been terrorizing innocent people in her own community."

He squeezes the wheel even tighter. Apparently there's more.

"A fisherman got robbed last night out at the river, Vic," he says, panic peeking through his voice. "I know it's them."

"Oh, shit," I say. "When did your grandma tell you?"

"Tuesday," he says, looking over at me a little wild-eyed, like he's trapped in corner, which he is.

"Ferg, seriously?"

He nods his head.

"Okay," I say. "Okay. We're good. You told Walt back then that they were your cousins, right?"

He's silent.

"Ferg, seriously." Now I'm getting worried.

"I was going to, but then they were gone," he whines. I guess he catches himself, because he uses a far more mature tone to admit, "That was an error in judgment."

"Well," I say, "I guess we better hope they don't shoot anyone between now and the time we get back to the office."

He nods. He's looking kind of pale.

When he drops me off, he leaves ahead of me. I sign for the truck and get a rundown of the repairs, then head to Durant myself. The entire way I'm trying to figure out the degree to which it's my fault the fisherman got robbed. I'll concede to maybe a fifth of the blame being on me. I'm the senior deputy. I should have reported what I knew. Or at least I should have confirmed that Ferg had talked to Walt. I come to the conclusion that twenty percent is likely to get me in some trouble. I'm pissed at Ferg for muddying up the post make-out glow, and I'm pissed at myself for still being so self-absorbed.

To my relief, the door to Walt's office is closed when I arrive, and Ferg isn't at his desk. I say good morning to Bud and Ruby and head to my desk like I'm intent on getting something very specific done. There's a Post-it on my chair with the name Sherry Mendenhall and a Denver phone number and the word PETA written at the bottom. I'm too distracted to ask Ruby about it now.

Maybe ten minutes later, the door opens and Ferg walks out with his head down and goes straight to his desk. I hear Walt's boots on his floor, walking over to the file cabinet, walking back to the window, walking to the coat rack, then heading our direction.

I'm paralyzed. The combination of the sex-energy and the somewhat legitimate fear that I'm going to hear about the severity of my error has me completely shut down.

Walt comes out with his coat and hat on and his rifle in hand. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't even turn my direction.

"Ruby," he says, and it's almost a bark which he usually doesn't use on her, "we've got a tip on those two home invasion suspects from a while back. We think it's related to Ned Abram's situation at the river last night."

"I'll pull the file," she says from her desk.

He stands there, probably thinking, but I can't see his face. His shoulders are hunched and he's got that stance like he's ready to kick some ass.

"We're heading out now," he says, so I stand up, and adjust my belt.

I'm grabbing my jacket, when Walt says, "Bud, let's go."

"What the fuck?" I say, and now he turns to me, and I don't have to be told it's a mistake. I sit down.

He doesn't actually even look at me when he says, a bit more calmly, "You and Ferg stay here. Let Ruby fill you in on the dog fighting report." Then he walks out the door.

Bud looks at me apologetically then follows.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

As I watch Walt then Bud cross the street below and get into the Bronco, I channel Aunt Maria and Tabatha: Everything doesn't have to be resolved right this second. Not knowing won't kill you. Sometimes the best course of action is inaction.

I consider the worst case scenario, and I'm certain I could handle it like an adult. This is new territory for me. I get on with my day.

After asking Ruby how she is and actually listening to the answer, I have her fill me in on the dog fighting situation. Apparently PETA has been sending what they call "cruelty investigators" out to various underground dogfighting venues throughout northern Colorado, Wyoming, and parts of Montana and South Dakota. The clincher is they think all these rings are connected and getting their dogs from the same breeder. They're hell bent on taking the whole thing down. Sherry Mendenhall represents them, or maybe even is one of them. She's coming to Durant to share some video with us, and I'm assuming, to convince us to get a warrant.

I hold off on calling her and pull my chair over to Ferg's desk. He's staring down, head in hands, at the report Bud filled out about Ned Abram.

"Ferg, you've got to get through this as fast as possible," I say, keeping my voice low so Ruby won't hear.

He turns his head without moving his hands. "This guy was hurt, Vic," he whispers. "It's my fault."

"Partially, yes," I say. "But wallowing in it won't change that, or the fact that any minute now Walt and Bud will come back through that door with your cousins in cuffs. They'll be sitting right there in that cell the rest of the day. You have to get past this."

I'm dreading what I know is coming, especially if he doesn't man up fast. Part of me wants to just tell him to go home, take whatever heat comes down on me as a result. But I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be helping him. This is something he has to do.

"They'll think I ratted them out," Ferg says.

"Of course they will. You represent the right side of things, and you went up against them, and at this point, before they get here, that's what they know. They know you stood up for what's right. They know you stood up to them, so I'm telling you, Ferg, you have to stand up."

He pulls his hands away from his face and this look of almost fierce concentration comes over him. He sits back in his chair, and he says, very confidently, "They scare the shit out of me."

"I know they do," I say, standing up, pulling my chair back to my desk, and sitting down. "But right now, they only know how things were, not how they are. You get to decide that."

He nods and turns back to his desk, still sitting up straight. I watch him put the report in his in-box and open a different file.

It's another hour before they get back, and when they do, all hell breaks loose. Walt has one and Bud has the other. Both guys are straining and thrashing, like they're trying to get free to run, but where? They're cuffed behind their backs. Even if they did escape, they'd have to get through two doors with actual door knobs just to get out onto the street.

Ferg is standing with the cell door open when they come around the corner. They're a skinny, crank-riddled Bo and Luke Duke with a buttload of tattoos and super poor hygiene.

When he sees Ferg, Bo yells, still straining against Walt, "You fat fuck! Had to go tell mommy!"

"Mark," Ferg says calmly with a nod of greeting. He's projecting his voice like I haven't heard him do before. "Not mommy. The sheriff. A whole different set of consequences."

He's killing it with the unruffled vibe.

When Luke sees Ferg, he spits, but Ferg is quick to move out of the way, like he was expecting it. "Earl," Ferg says, same nod.

"You always were a faggot loser," Earl says.

I don't like to overuse the word cretin, but for these guys, it definitely fits. Honestly, I'm confused as to how they kept their crime spree going for so long. It's like law enforcement wasn't even trying.

The door slams shut, and Walt and Bud walk away, but Ferg stands right there, facing them. His feet are shoulder width apart, and he's got his hands clasped behind his back. Seriously, the man has presence.

"Yeah," he says to them with a dimpled smile. "I'm the loser." Then he walks back to his desk.

I'd like to say the scene ends that way, but in reality, they spend the next two hours yelling obscenities and slamming themselves up against the bars until one of them, Bo-Mark, falls asleep on the floor.

It's around this time that Walt comes out of his office and finally looks at me, just for a second. "Vic," he says, "when you're finished with whatever you're doing, I need to talk to you."

Since I'm pretty sure he wouldn't let me down easy with everyone still in the office, and I'm positive he wouldn't kiss me, I'm thinking this is about the bungled communication regarding the Dukes of Absaroka.

I'm apprehensive when I walk in there, but I'm not really nervous, which is weird.

He's at his desk, and he says, "Close the door. Please."

I do it, and I sit down.

His hair is all messed up, and he looks tired. He glances at me briefly, seems a bit uneasy.

"Vic," he says, semi-smile, lovely deep voice. "You know, we're responsible here, in the Department, for the safety of the citizens of this county."

I nod. He sort of smiles, sort of looks in my general direction.

"And, uh, we can't anticipate every danger they might encounter, but some of them we can, and we can't make mistakes on those."

I nod.

"I depend on you like a partner. Ferg still has a lot to learn, but you I think, at some point, could run this place. That in mind, there are mistakes you shouldn't be making."

He's never said anything like this before.

"I need to know, Vic, I need your word that you won't ever withhold information like this again."

Withhold? The devil in me wants to argue, but I shut it down.

"Okay," I say. "You have it. I absolutely should have told you what I knew. Ferg did say he would tell you, but considering the circumstances, I should have followed through." It suddenly dawns on me that maybe I didn't because I didn't want Ferg to start hating me again.

"When did he tell you they were back?" he asks.

"Today. Only today, this morning, right before we came in." I want to plead my case, beg him to believe I would have done something about it if I'd known on Tuesday, but strangely, I also don't want to.

He nods, sits back, stretches his long arms across his desk, taps his fingers on the surface, looks out towards the window.

I think we're done, so I stand up, and as I'm about to go, he actually looks at me, completely. His expression softens, and he smiles, like he's remembering. I don't know how long it's like that, but I feel like I'm communicating with him, telling him how it is, telling him things I'm not ready for him to know.

It's me who breaks the contact. It's me who walks away.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

It's my turn to stay with the prisoners, so I'm doing paper work and listening to Pandora, George Strait of all things, while the cousins rest their meth-addled brains in the cell. The detention center is sending officers to pick them up, but I guess there's a backlog, and now they say they won't make it until after 9:00. I'm exhausted and I'm hungry, and I'm a little worried about Rufus. I did go home for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, and I took him out then, but still.

When they show up at around 9:45, I've already been nodding off and having snippets of dreams about pizza and Greek yogurt. The officers, two huge linemen types, basically have to peel the guys off the floor and carry them down the stairs. I help get them into the van then thank the detention center guys.

I'm crossing the street, heading back to the office to get my stuff, when the Bronco pulls up.

Now I'm officially nervous.

I wait by the door as he gets out and walks across the street, no hat. He's taken a shower and he's wearing a gray T-shirt under his coat. I'm not reading anything into it, though. I don't think there's much to read actually.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"Just wanted to make sure they picked up our prisoners."

He looks down at me, like he's waiting for me to say something. All I can think of is, I find you extraordinarily attractive, so I choose to say nothing.

He opens the door. I go in and start up the stairs while he locks up and pulls the blinds.

I'm tidying up my desk when he comes in. "I just need to clean this up then I'm heading out," I say. "Okay?"

He goes into his office, turns on the lights, and comes back out, minus the jacket. His arms are really hairy. I want to touch them.

He's standing there, hand on hip, watching me maybe.

"Why don't you come in here for a minute?" he says, motioning with his head towards his office. "Just leave that."

"I'm almost done," I say. "It's late." But I stop what I'm doing, and I just stand there. I'm thinking he won't push it here, not in the office. He won't ask more than once.

"No one's coming back tonight," he says in almost a whisper, tilting his head, trying to meet my eyes.

"Do you regret the other night?" I ask, surprised it slipped out but also relieved that it's out there.

"What?" He comes towards me, leans on the desk, and with fingers under my chin, lifts my head so I have to look at him. Right at him.

"No," he says, shaking his head.

He's so close.

"Today?" I say.

He moves his hand away, sits on the edge of the desk, facing me, knee almost touching my legs.

"You screwed up, Vic. Come on."

"No," I say. "I don't mean that. I had that coming."

In what feels like a single fluid motion, he stands up, reaches out with one arm and catches me around the waist, pulls me into him. Holds me there.

"We agreed to back off," he says into my hair. "Didn't we?"

"We did."

He kisses the soft skin above my collar bone. "I can look at you or I can back off. I can't do both."

"Suddenly you understand the avoidance tactic," I say, smiling into his chest.

Taking my hand, he leads me into his office, saying, "Come here. Just for a few minutes."

Once in there, he pulls me back into him. "There are things we should probably talk about."

"I know," I say, but actually I don't really. He doesn't mean talk about the fact that I'm married, because I'm not, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean talk about the guilt he's feeling for betraying Martha, because he seems to have made peace with that. He might mean the work thing. Or he might mean condoms.

He walks backwards, still holding me, and somehow, he manages to sit down on the couch while lifting me slightly and pulling me onto his lap, so I'm straddling him, like easily two-thirds of my fantasies. It's a very dangerous position.

"I don't want to ruin anything," he says. "But it's hard."

He pulls my hips towards him, and he breathes into my neck, then kisses it. He runs his fingers through my hair.

"Vic," he says, "I want to touch you everywhere."

"I want you to touch me everywhere."

I've never in my life been so turned on and done nothing about it. But I do nothing.

I feel him now, underneath me, through my jeans. Through his jeans.

Very faintly, in a way that might not be intentional, he pushes against me. I lean forward and kiss him, and it's one of those smooth, melty, dream-like kisses. In the middle of it, I push back because I can't help it. He smiles his rare big smile, while we're kissing, and pushes up harder, pulling my hips down over him. He slides down a little on the couch and the angle is so much better I know we're screwed. Figuratively.

"Is age an issue?" he asks, breathing pretty hard now.

He's pushing against me, shamelessly, rhythmically, and I'm pushing back. I can't keep a thought in my head. I lean into him and I say breathlessly in his ear, "I never think about it."

He pulls me towards him again, while pressing into me, his hands on my waist, above my belt, just a tiny patch of sensitive skin where my shirt, both shirts, have come loose, against the tip of his ring finger. I moan, and I'm embarrassed, so I laugh, and so does he.

There's no question what's going on now. Seriously, who does this?

"I want you so bad," he says and I can tell by the crescendo in his whisper that he's getting close. "I," he says, breathing, and then nothing else.

"Are you," I start, trying to catch my breath, burning up in my uniform, keeping time with the ever increasing rhythm that's no longer even pretending not to be a rhythm. I'm trying to think. "Are you seriously about to do this?"

"I think so," he says, and he kisses me, and the inside of his mouth is like two hundred degrees.

He's breathing really hard now, and I can tell his eyes aren't focused. "I'm your boss," he says in this sort of whispery, breathy, blurt.

"That's it," I say, and he's there, I know it. His eyes roll ever so slightly then he closes them, and he lets out this groan that he's obviously trying to suppress, and he pulls me closer. I tell him, "That's the one . . ." breath ". . . we need . . ." breath ". . . we need . . ." breath ". . . to discuss."

He's still pushing against me, slower now, holding me unbelievably close to him, and the idea that he just did what he did, through two pairs of jeans, and the smell of him, just the organic rawness of this whole experience, send me over the edge, too.

Then it's just us, crumpled up, finished, on the other side of this thing, this thing we did together, that no one else—besides you—will ever know, but that we will both remember, probably in erotic detail, for the rest of our lives.

This is the moment when everything changes.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

This is what I remember:

I was on a fast-moving train, in a dark tunnel, headed for the light—a total cliché. I think I was driving because I seemed to be in control of the speed. The anticipation was killing me. I wasn't thinking straight; I was going too fast. All I wanted was to be there already. Jittery, agitated, yearning, I floored it, or whatever one does to make a train go faster. Then suddenly, within maybe a hundred yards of the light, the destination, I realized it wasn't really a light. It was actually a floor-to-ceiling wall, painted gold, reflecting the light from the train, my train. Terror seized me. Obviously, it was too late because, like I said, I was moving way too fast, and I had no idea how to stop a train anyway. Just as the metal tip of the cowcatcher hit the wall like a sledgehammer striking concrete, I fell through a hole in the dream and landed on my bed with a violent jerk, expecting an explosive crunching of metal to follow.

Instead I hear Rufus whining. He is sitting next to the bed in the blue dawn light, confused and maybe a tad offended. It's possible he was hurled from the bed when I was hurled from my nightmare.

A coherent thought begins to form, so I move, quickly. My groggy mind believes I can outrun it.

Within ten minutes, we're in the truck—day pack, water, snacks, dog snacks, dog, person, etc. Rufus rides shotgun. I'm not sure if that's permitted in a county vehicle, just as I am unclear on the regulations surrounding the use of a county office for non-county activity after hours.

I blast seventies Van Halen to drive out thoughts like this.

We hit 16 as the horizon behind us is yellowing, and we head west, like a bat out of my swarming mind.

It's a thirty minute drive from door to trailhead. We pull into the dirt parking lot at 7:35 AM, sunrise.

The trail starts out winding through an aspen grove, all yellow and orange for fall, then climbs a thousand feet in the next mile. The grade and the elevation make breathing difficult, not to mention thinking. When we reach the plateau, both of us are panting, fogging up the cold air. A grassy golden expanse spreads towards the snow-dusted peaks in the distance. It's quiet up here, and peaceful, and crossing the flat is easy, so the thoughts start nudging their way back in.

Last night starts playing in my head, so good yet so bad.

Post non-county activity, he walked me to my truck and hugged me in the dim light from the lamps in the square, in the midnight cold. He stepped back, held my shoulders, looked in my eyes, almost too serious, and said, "You could come home with me."

I didn't believe he meant it. Or, I didn't believe he knew he didn't mean it. He was ready for that, upstairs, but I didn't think he was ready for us, together, at his cabin, all night and the next morning. I knew I wasn't ready for that.

I used Rufus as an excuse, and I hoped he wouldn't offer to come with me. He didn't.

Now, here, wandering through this place that usually reminds me how small I am in the grand scheme, I am torn and scattered by what feels like a big problem becoming massive. As much as I'd like to practice my chill, be more Zen, this is actually more complicated than I realized, and it's not like I ever saw it as uncomplicated.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in most places of employment, there are rules against sleeping with the help, are there not?

And consider this: He has a daughter who is five years younger than me, and almost certainly more mature. That's not, in itself, an issue for me, and it may not be much of an issue for him, but knowing her in the limited way I do, I'm guessing it would be a significant issue for her.

But wait, there's more. We both have a tendency towards self-absorption and disproportionate responses to emotionally challenging stimuli, some of which is tied to previous relationships. We're both working on it, but I think it would be fair to say that neither of us is there yet.

And finally, there's been very little thinking ahead on my part, and from the way he's been acting, probably not much on his part either. We've already started. It's like a high school hook-up at a party. All you think about is that magnetic moment, right that second. You don't consider that you will have to sit next to that sexy beast on Monday in Algebra II, and that sexy beast might not welcome the reminder. You definitely don't think about what all this means to the other person because you're so wrapped up in what you're feeling right here, right now. It doesn't occur to you that at some point, you might care what it means, and if it means the wrong thing, it's too late to spare yourself.

In a matter of four days, we have created a situation in which it would be virtually impossible for us to be alone together and not end up naked within minutes, but we've established absolutely nothing about what we're doing. We're screaming down the tracks towards that light.

As Rufus and I start our descent on the far side of the plateau, the day is warming. Thinking about it did not, in fact, kill me. I feel brave.

Over the past three months, I backed off and stayed back, and I had my reasons. In the most basic sense, at least where Walt is concerned, I know now what I needed to know: He feels it, too. It wasn't all in my head. He brought himself to this point, and that's the way it had to be.

Back at the truck, I take out my cell phone. I actually have a signal. I call his house, and I get the machine, his own voice. I hang up and call the office, and he answers. I've missed him.

"Walt," I say.

"Vic." I hear the smile, the tenderness. He says, softly, kind of playfully, "Do you still respect me?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," I say, and I know this is not the tone or the message I had planned, but I don't care.

"Where are you?"

"I'm out at the Zion trailhead in the Bighorns."

"What are you doing out there?" he asks, but not like he's suspicious or worried or surprised or anything. It's like he is truly interested.

"Hiking," I say. "And thinking."

"Is Fido with you?"

"Rufus," I say. "Yeah, he's here."

"Want me to meet you guys out there?" My heart is aflutter. But I know better; I know what would happen—not how, but what.

"No," I say. "We'll meet you there. Outside, in the square."

"Okay," he says, this time maybe a little wary.

"There are some things we should discuss."

"Didn't I say that last night?" he says.

"You did. That's why we're meeting outside."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

When we pull up, Walt's already out there amongst probably forty other people engaged in small town Sunday afternoon recreation. He's sitting on a bench, chatting with tiny Marjorie Wilson, who's like ninety-six years old, no exaggeration. She's bundled up for a blizzard and feeding the pigeons, and he's smiling at whatever she's telling him.

Seeing us, he stands up. He seems extra tall. He kisses Mrs. Wilson's frail little hand and walks over to us, through a game of catch, past the old dudes playing chess, over the grass to where we're standing at the edge of the square.

"Walt, this is Rufus. Rufus, Walt."

Rufus sits, and Walt squats down and tousles his ears. "Hey, buddy. How was the hike?"

Rufus wiggles his butt while making an impressive effort to keep it on the ground. When Walt stands back up, Rufus looks up at him adoringly.

"He could probably use a few more of those outings."

"Don't say that," I say, like I'm offended. "He can hear you." Brazen flirtation at the poor dog's expense.

He leans over, so close to my ear that I feel his breath and smell the aftershave he seems to only wear when he's trying to drive me insane. It sends goose bumps down my neck.

He whispers, "Brown labs, as a rule, aren't too bright," but I'm pretty sure that's not what he's really saying, especially because his lips brush my ear before he pulls away.

"Sad but true," I say, looking up, locking eyes. My subtext says, If we weren't outside right now, downtown, on the busiest day of the week, I'd rip your clothes off. With my teeth.

There's a vacant picnic table near the bandstand, out in the sun, which is good because there's a cool breeze and my shirt is still damp from the hike. I give Rufus two snack bones that he wolfs down, mostly without chewing. He squeezes himself under the table, tries half-heartedly to dig a hole, then almost immediately falls asleep.

The cement bench is cold through my pants.

We stare at each other for so long that I sense others nearby starting to stare at us.

So I begin: "You thought we should talk last night."

"Yeah." He grins, like we're telepathically reveling in some inside joke.

"We have to focus," I say. I'm not participating.

"Okay. I know," he says, shaking his head, clearing the image I'm assuming.

"We'll take turns. Let's get this shit out there."

He nods.

"We work in the same county office and I'm your subordinate," I say.

He sits there with a sort of blank stare, like he's waiting for a translation or something.

Just when I think I'm going to have to repeat myself, he says, "And we already had sex."

"What?" I say, a bit too sharp and a bit too loud. "No we didn't. Are you kidding?"

"That doesn't count?" he asks, and I'm not sure if maybe he's messing with me, if he's purposely trying to rile me up. Either way, it's working.

"Hell no that doesn't count. If that counts, we got ripped off. We might as well go up there now and do it right." What on earth is wrong with me? I mean really.

He's blushing. "You can't say things like that out here."

"Okay," I say, way quieter, feeling kind of foolish. I look around furtively to see if anyone heard my outburst.

"Not because someone might hear," he says, glancing down into his lap.

"Oh," I say. "Okay. Got it."

Holy crap.

I lean forward, lower my voice, "We didn't have sex, but it's pretty obvious we will. Soon."

"God, I hope so," he says.

"Okay. If you're not going to take this seriously, I'm going home."

"No," he says, putting his hand on mine briefly. "It is serious. Let's do this."

"The work situation," I say.

"I looked up the employee handbook this morning."

"You did? Where?"

"On the internet," he says.

"You know how to use the internet?"

He ignores me.

A red Frisbee scrapes across the table and a kid comes running after it. "Sorry, Sheriff," he says.

Walt waves, like he's thanking the kid for letting him merge.

"I used Bud's computer," he says. "Skimmed the whole thing, and there wasn't one word in there about interoffice relationships. L.A. County, on the other hand, had three pages."

"Huh," I say.

"This is Absaroka County, Wyoming. Maybe they think rules like that could prevent population growth."

"Okay," I say, somewhat comforted. "But we still work with other people who might not like the idea of it."

"I did think about that, too," he says. Now he's all business. "Do they need to know? I mean, eventually, if . . . ." He stops.

"If what?"

"If it goes further," he says, but I can tell he doesn't think it sounds right. It doesn't sound right to me. He takes off his hat, puts it on the table upside down like they do, scratches his head. "We don't have to announce it the first time is what I'm saying. Or the twentieth time even, do we?"

"So we should hide it," I say.

"For now. At work. Henry already knows."

"Knows what? There isn't much to know, is there?"

"How I feel," he says. He looks up, straight into my eyes, and I look away.

I don't want clarification on that. "Does he know about last night?"

He shakes his head.

"Thursday?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"We should stay on topic," he says. He's taken over keeping us in line.

"Okay. I guess that one's done. Your turn."

"Age," he says, squinting out across the lawn at something on the other side of the park. This is how he regains control.

"You asked me about that last night."

"You were distracted," he says, and I can tell he's trying really hard not to grin like a fifteen-year-old.

"What's your concern?" I ask.

"The gap," he says.

"It's seventeen years. Sometimes sixteen. What's the big deal?"

"People could talk, I guess."

It does amaze me how no socially conscious individual, even in conservative Wyoming, would even consider suggesting in public that an interracial relationship is inappropriate, yet no one seems to mind smack talking age gaps.

"Who cares," I say. "People are idiots."

He smiles.

"Other concerns?" I ask.

"Well, you might want someone younger."

"What the fuck, Walt?" I catch myself, adjust the volume. "Seriously, don't say anything like that again. It sucks the sexy right out of you. Don't make me tell you I want you like this. It's a waste of prime material."

"Okay," he says. "You can tell me the right way later."

Now I ignore him.

"I have no issue with it," I say. "I never think about it. If it's an issue for you, though, we should deal with it."

He seems to be considering what I'm saying, though I'm not sure which part. Finally, he says, "It's not."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah," he says, like he just that second came to the conclusion that it really doesn't bother him. "What's next?"

"Cady."

"Cady?"

"Yeah. Cady."

"You think she'd object," he says. It's a statement.

"Don't you?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure she would now, after everything else."

"You mean you don't think she'd object, or you don't think she'd admit she objects?" I say.

"Probably the second one," he says.

"So that's a problem."

"Is it? She's almost thirty."

"She's your daughter," I say.

"But she'd get over it. She has her own life."

"I don't know."

"I'll tell you what," he says, like a new and progressive approach has just come to him. "We can hide it from her, too."

"That sounds like a healthy solution," I say, intending sarcasm, but actually, it might not be so bad. It's definitely more considerate than flaunting it. "Okay," I say.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Yeah. That's fine. Your turn."

Delay, squint across park, then uncomfortably long eye contact.

"What is this?" he finally says, sounding maybe a little embarrassed.

"What is what?" I say, but I know what he means, and I feel like kind of a jerk for suggesting he should clarify. "Never mind. I know what."

He answers me anyway. "What is what we're doing?"

"According to you, it's sex," I say.

He gives me a deadpan stare. "If you aren't going to take this seriously, I'm going home." He's kidding, but I know he's also not.

"You're right," I say. "I'm sorry."

I think about going around to his side, sliding in next to him, holding him close with my cheek against his. Someday soon I will not merely think these thoughts; I will execute them.

"It's very, very physical," I say, "but it's even more not physical."

He smiles. "Me too. But I'm taking a beating from the physical part right now."

"That totally turns me on," I say. It sounds all animal and unrefined. "I realize that's not very helpful."

"I don't know what to do," he says.

"Yeah, you do, and I'm betting you're good at it."

"You have to stop that," he says, and God, the look he's giving me.

"Can we not call it dating?" I say, moving away from the heat. "Can we not call it anything for now?"

"Yeah," he says. "But I won't share you."

"You'd never have to."

"Last one," he says. "For now."

"Okay."

"Protection," he says, keeping his voice down, but otherwise, surprisingly comfortable.

"Condoms suck."

"I know, but they serve a purpose."

"They serve multiple purposes," I say. "How many partners? Since Martha."

"One. Once."

"Oh, man. I feel bad about that."

"It wasn't your fault," he says.

"I think it might have been, at least partially."

"I wasn't ready, and it wasn't right. I didn't treat her very well."

I knew that, and I'm certain if he'd ever acted like that towards me, none of this would be happening. I wouldn't feel what I feel. Obviously, neither would he.

"Only Sean," I say. "Six years."

"You're on the . . . ," he says.

"Yes. So that's one purpose taken care of."

"The other?"

"I need a physical. I know Ruby's been hounding you for what, a year? Two maybe?"

"Probably longer," he says.

"Okay. So that. Get a physical."

"And we're both going to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases by the same doctor?"

"It's a small ass town, Walt, but not that small. There are other doctors. Even maybe a woman or two."

I call Rufus out from under the table. We stand there waiting as he develops and attempts two, then three escape plans. I finally crouch down and hold a biscuit near where he went in, and he squeezes himself out. He needed some motivation.

When we get to the truck, I open the passenger door. He jumps in and curls up on the seat. Clearly I'm wearing him out.

"Leave the window cracked," Walt says.

"Why?" If I sound suspicious it's because I most certainly am.

"Two minutes," he says, nodding in the direction of the office. He runs his fingers down my arm, holds my hand gently then lets it go.

"I'm timing it," I say.

"Good idea." He starts across the street.

After putting the key in to roll the windows down, I take out my phone and follow him. He's waiting for me at the door.

I show him the timer. "I'm serious," I say. "We just got all this reined back in. And I'm not going upstairs."

"I wouldn't expect you to." He seems very pleased with himself. "The timer starts once we're inside," he says.

"Whatever."

He opens the door and I follow him in, just onto the bottom landing.

He closes the door and pulls the blinds.

We're now in the half-light of the dark stairway and the late afternoon sun shining through the high window above the door.

I press start, slip the phone into my pocket, and he's got me up against the wall, kissing my neck, hands up both my sides, then around my back, and down to my ass. It's all hot and muggy, already. Then the kissing starts. This man will be the death of me. He squeezes my butt then runs one hand up my chest on top of my shirt, where he hasn't been before, and it's happening again: I'm short on breath, helium-headed, out of control. I wrap my arms around his waist, get two fistfuls of shirt in my hands and pull up, the way I've imagined. All the way around, I pull the tails out, and he's back on my neck, and then my mouth, and then my neck again. My hands are under his shirt, feeling the soft skin, the hair, the muscle, finally, after all this time. He shivers. Then there's a hand on my belt, and he pulls me out, away from the wall. He stops kissing me, looks down, hair in his eyes, the hat is gone, somewhere. He starts working the belt, trying to figure it out.

The alarm sounds. I grab his wrists to stop him.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I'm on the medical group's website scrolling through doctors in the area when at 8:35 AM, twenty-five minutes before our scheduled appointment, Sherry Mendenhall and her unbridled intensity enter the office.

I slam my laptop shut like I just got caught looking at porn.

Mendenhall has maybe twenty braids sticking up and out at odd angles all over her bottled-black hair, and each one is tied with a different colored strip of fabric. It's a statement in a language I don't understand. However, she does look pretty much exactly how I would have expected a PETA representative to look had I spent any time expecting.

I'm already up and heading her way when she sort of yells in her raspy voice, "I'm looking for Deputy Moretti," like she's calling me out to the street for a face-off at high noon.

"That's me," I say because leading with, What the fuck is your problem? rarely goes well.

Ferg and Ruby are obviously getting the same loose-cannon vibe. All three of us gather in the entryway at the same time and commence ass-kissing.

"Good morning, Ms. Mendenhall," Ruby says, ushering her into the office with undeserved warmth and good nature. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

Under a black trench-coat, she is wearing an army green shirt that says, ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE, TOO. But I'm pretty sure they aren't. Her Transitions lenses are still transitioning. "Is it fair trade?" she asks.

Ruby gives her this perplexed look, and I notice they're about the same height. Sixty seconds ago I would have estimated she was an inch or two taller than me. That's attitude for you.

Ruby looks at me for help. "Probably not," I say to Sherry.

"No thank you then," she says with a hint of disdain. We're pretty backwoods around here.

"Here," says Ferg, offering up the extra chair next to his desk like a slightly irked gentleman. "Have a seat."

She puts her huge black tote bag right on top of a pile of Ferg's papers then sits down.

"Will the Sheriff be joining us?" she asks as though she wants us to understand in no uncertain terms that we aren't worth her time.

"Should be," I say, though I really have no idea. It was my meeting.

"When we met yesterday, he indicated he would be here."

He indicated? Yesterday? Was this before or after said sheriff felt me up in the stairwell?

"The meeting's actually not for another twenty minutes, so . . . ," Ferg says.

I sneak a look at him and wink, and he gives me a quick smile before morphing right back into serious, take-no-shit Ferg. I'm proud of him.

"I guess I could show you some footage taken by one of our investigators," Sherry says, throwing us a bone we don't really want.

Ruby takes this opportunity to go back to her domain, and I don't blame her. Even if she were interested in the video, and I can't imagine she would be, the scent of patchouli now hanging thick in the atmosphere around Ferg's desk is a pretty effective repellent. In fact, my throat may be closing up. A wave of anaphylaxis paranoia seizes me until I realize if I do have a serious allergic reaction, I'll be able to get my blood test today.

Sherry moves over to Ferg's chair and props her iPad up on two volumes of the penal code. I pull my chair over, and Ferg uses the guest chair. We huddle in the toxic air around Sherry for the screening.

The video has a low-budget horror flick quality: grainy, wobbly, washed out black and white. _The Blair Witch Project_ in a barn in northern Wyoming.

In the background there's a constant, rhythmic, distorted thumping, maybe country music, and in the most violent parts, there are distorted cheers and growls mixed in. Speech is difficult to decipher, and the camera is hidden in some article of clothing, so we have tunnel-vision. When the investigator turns too far one way or the other, it's hard to tell what's going on.

The fighters enter from opposite sides of the screen, both on thick rope leashes, both straining against their handlers. Though it's difficult to make out details, there is visible scarring on both dogs.

"What's wrong with that one dog's ears?" Ferg asks, leaning in towards the screen.

Sherry touches the screen to pause the video and zooms in on the ears. Up close it's obvious that they've been crudely altered.

"The handlers do that," she says, all gravelly and matter-of-fact. "They cut the tops off, probably with kitchen shears, so the opponent can't take hold."

Ferg and I exchange a look, but I'm not sure if it's a will-you-get-a-load-of-this-chick look, or a people-are-such-warped-bastards look. Either way, I'm uncomfortable.

Not much happens at the beginning. They just circle each other and lunge a few times. My uneasiness at this point is in anticipation of the inevitable horror to come.

Sherry skips through maybe seventy-five minutes, far beyond the point where it looks like they're only playing. It already seems like awfully long time to feel enraged and terrified. This is a short one, she tells us. These fights have been known to last for eight hours or even longer.

When we resume, the scene is much worse. Some of the images are beyond hard to take. A cloud of dust surrounds them as they tumble and snarl and fight desperately. This is life and death, and these animals know it, probably better than they know anything else.

What appears to be blood seeps into what appears to be white fur; flesh and maybe entrails droop out of an open wound in a belly; and towards the end, a jaw is unhinged and hanging loose. And that's not even the worst of it.

The hardest images to stomach are of them staggering around, disoriented, exhausted. It's at these moments that it's most obvious they didn't choose this. Their lives are entirely about need, and it's probably been like that since they were born. There is no want—want is a luxury. In their lives, there are no dog biscuits, no naps under picnic tables, no rides in the front seat out to the Bighorns.

They need a break, but what they need even more is to survive. For them, that's all there is, and now, that's all there ever will be.

Sherry skips forward one last time to the point where the fight is called, about half an hour after the white one, the female, looks half dead.

Just then, Walt comes in from the landing, startling all three of us.

"Morning, Walt," Ruby calls from what seems like a different dimension.

I hadn't even heard his boots. That never happens.

"Morning, Ruby," he says.

I barely even register his face before my attention is back on the screen. Ferg is still right here next to me, but it's like we're in these invisible, isolated pods, separate.

Now she is lying in the middle of the ring, blood spreading from her body, darkening the dirt. Her breaths are shallow, intermittent. She will die, hopefully soon, right there on display. Conspicuously unloved.

Sherry pauses the video in the catwalk between life and death, internment and freedom. She gets up to greet Walt, which is very generous of her since Ferg and I are frozen and hollowed out, stuck to our chairs, gaping at the screen.

Then she's back in Ferg's chair, and Walt is behind me. He leans into the back of my chair, and his right hand discreetly, briefly squeezes my shoulder, and is gone. The electricity is noticeably absent. Yesterday afternoon seems like a whole different life.

I'm suddenly very sleepy.

In the video, a detached milling around begins, while the life winds down.

The investigator walks to the other side of the ring. This is the first time we've seen faces. So far, there has been no sign of money, weapons, or drugs, all of which tend to accompany these events. It's what I'm trying to convince myself I'm looking for, but all I'm really thinking is I want to break away, walk back in time. I want to go back to the center of the ring, lie down next to her, wrap my arms around her. I don't care if I get blood on my shirt.

The investigator approaches a shaggy-haired man kneeling in the dirt next to the winner, who is lying on his side, shallow breaths and vacant eyes. The kneeling man pulls a wire from off screen somewhere. It is frayed at the end, and he holds it down onto the winner's neck. The winner convulses then lies still.

The investigator walks around the winner's body, and says something to the kneeling man. At first there is no response, but after a while, the man looks up at the investigator.

And I'm suddenly on my feet, reaching out in freeze-frame, touching the screen to pause the video, turning to Walt, then Ferg, then Walt again.

I'm dazed, disconnected. "That's dumbass," I say.

They're looking across this chasm at me, from what feels like miles away. Then, in unison, they say, "Van der Horn."


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

"You're kicking me out?" I ask, opening the top drawer of my desk.

"Vic."

I slide some pens and paper clips around then close it again. "I have to leave, but wacky PETA chick gets to stay?" I look up at him.

"Vic."

"Walt."

He scratches his head, puts his hand on his hip, shifts his weight.

"No one's saying you have to leave. Do you want to stay?" he asks.

"Not really."

"Okay then," he says, all controlled and even, like he's coaxing a shotgun out of Lucian Connally's fingers. "We'll see you back here with the warrant."

"It might take me a while," I say. "It'll be like a forty-two page affidavit, so I probably won't even make it over to the courthouse until next Tuesday."

He gives me a little smile. Even objectively speaking, he is a very good looking man. "We need as much detail as possible, but we need it today. Copy the items list from the ASPCA website. And don't forget the brother."

"Don't tell Sherry you're taking recommendations from the ASPCA."

Glancing back towards his office then lowering his voice and leaning in towards me, he says, "Looks like the Humane Society and the ASPCA are already working with the FBI on this."

"Then what's she doing here?" I ask.

"I'm not sure," he says. "As far as I can tell, PETA hasn't been involved."

"But they had investigators at the fights."

"Maybe."

"You don't think that's their video?" I ask. It seems like a pretty time-consuming and pointless scam to come all the way up here to share another organization's work.

He shrugs, maintains eye contact. I can tell he's considering moving closer, but he doesn't, and I'm glad. It's inappropriate, and I've had enough inappropriate for one week.

"What if the judge isn't there? I don't know where this one lives," I say.

"He's new. Ask Yaga," he says. We both know I'm acting uncharacteristically helpless. I need to stop.

"Okay."

"Thanks, Vic," he says, walking back towards his office where Bud and Sherry are waiting.

"Sure," I say, looking out the window.

It's an overcast late October morning, Halloween week. There are harvest flags on the poles surrounding the square that must have been there yesterday, but this is the first time I've noticed them.

"I want to kill that guy," Ferg says from his desk. He's been given an alternate assignment, too.

"Walt?" I ask, typing _ASPCA dogfight search warrant_ into Google. "Yeah, I guess he's being kind of a dick."

"Not Walt," Ferg whispers, furrowed brow. "Van der Horn."

"Oh, right," I say. "I wish I wanted to kill him. That'd be a lot easier than feeling like this."

"Like what?"

"I've turned soft or something, Ferg. Don't even try to deny it. I should have just stayed angry and selfish." Except then I'd end up like the white dog. I leave that part out.

He smiles.

"See?" I say.

"I like you better this way," he says.

"You like me better this way until you need me for back-up and I sit down and start crying."

"That would never happen," he says.

"Don't be so sure. It's happening right now."

He's confused.

"Metaphorically," I say.

When I finish up the affidavit at nearly two o'clock, I walk across the square to the courthouse.

Yaga Yellow Hawk is at her immaculate desk, opening mail. "Hi, Vic," she says.

"Hey, Yaga." I hand her the report. "When you're done with that, could you come over and organize my desk for me?"

She takes it and thumbs through it. "That's thick," she says, getting up and walking down the hall to the judge's chambers.

A minute later, she comes back, followed by a young, thin J. Crew model. Her son maybe.

"Deputy Vic Moretti," Yaga says, "this is Judge Ezequiel Manuelos."

Half expecting them to both start laughing, I say, "Nice to meet you, Your Honor."

He shakes my hand and smiles, revealing impossibly white teeth. If this is a joke, it's a complicated one.

"Zeke," he says. He's not quite as young as he looked at first, but he's definitely under forty. "I've heard a lot about you."

"That can't be good," I say.

"Dogfighting, huh?" he says, flipping through the pages.

"Pretty sick stuff." I hate small talk.

He puts the affidavit down in front of Yaga, who is now back in her chair. "Did you know, Deputy," he says, like this is a test, "that Wyoming was the last state to make dog fighting a felony? Only five or six years ago."

"I did know that," I say. Walt told me the day we went after the squatter, the day it all started. "Hard to imagine," I add, but it's not even remotely hard to imagine, and I don't know why I say these things. It's the odd habit of a people pleaser, which makes it extra weird.

"We'll get the warrant prepared and I'll walk it over later this afternoon," he says.

For various reasons, this makes me uneasy. "I don't want to inconvenience you. I can come back."

"No inconvenience, Deputy," he says, again with the smile.

"You can call me Vic," I say. "Thanks."

"No problem," he says, heading back down the hall.

As I'm turning to leave, Yaga says, "If an organized desk worked for you, your desk would be organized."

Everyone's a fucking philosopher.


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

On my last lap around the park, the first snowflake of the season lands on my face, just below my left eye. Then within seconds, there are more—floating pale specks against the paler afternoon sky. Before they reach the ground, they disappear.

I get back to the office, and Sherry is gone. There's an anxious frequency in her wake, and Walt's door is closed.

"What's going on?" I whisper to Bud across our desks.

"PETA went ape-shit on the sheriff."

"You know her name's not PETA, right?" I ask.

"Did you just ask me a question or not?" The more annoyed he is, the more Bud sounds like Shrek's Puss in Boots. Of course, I would never point this out to him.

Ferg rolls over to us on his chair. "She lost it," he says then defers to Bud for elaboration.

"When Walt told her the FBI was coming in with the Humane Society's mobile vet unit, she snapped. Said it was breach of contract."

"What contract?" I ask.

"There is no contract," he says, like I already exceeded the stupid question quota. "This is law enforcement, not reality television." Reality TV, I'm thinking. Anyone else would say reality TV.

"She said this is PETA's show," Ferg chimes in, "since PETA provided the tip."

"Did she use the word 'show'?" I ask.

They look at each other. Bud says, "I think she did. Then Walt asks for the name of the undercover investigator who shot the video."

"She got all red in the face, Vic," says Ferg. "Veins popping out in her neck. I think her head almost exploded."

"What did Walt do?"

"He thanked her," says Bud. "He just said we can take it from here."

"She said it's a free country so she'd see us on Wednesday at the raid," says Ferg.

"Oh my God. That's so fourth grade," I say. "The raid's on Wednesday?"

They both nod. "You got the warrant, right?" asks Bud.

"It's coming," I say, and a twinge of dread pokes me in the stomach. "Then what happened?"

"Walt asked us to see her out," Ferg says. "She cussed us all the way down the stairs. Said we can expect to hear from PETA's attorney."

"What the hell? I thought this was about the animals."

It's like the same seed plants itself in our brains at exactly the same time.

"Oh, shit," I say. "How long ago did she leave?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes," says Ferg.

"She's not dumb, Vic," says Bud, but suggesting there's nothing to worry about while sounding worried never works.

"You sure about that?" I ask, not so much because I think she is, in fact, dumb as because any overestimation of her mental competence at this point could get her killed.

"Sure about what?"

Walt's voice comes from somewhere behind me, and it stops my heart temporarily like an especially forceful sneeze.

This is the second time in a day that I didn't hear him coming. I'm definitely off my game.

He stops in the middle of the floor, hands on both hips, and waits, like he's got all the time in the world. Like he's hanging out, except he's got his jacket and hat on.

"I was just saying I'm sure PETA isn't dumb," Bud says.

"He means Sherry," I clarify. Judging from the way Bud is mad-dogging me, my help is unwelcome.

"We were just hoping," I say, "that Sherry in her pissed off state would know better than to try to tip off Van der Horn." At least I'm assuming that's what we're hoping.

He looks over at the front door then back at us. "Seems to me like she knows her stuff. I think she's more sophisticated than you're giving her credit for."

"It's not credit, Walt. She might be as savvy as she seems, but it's just, what if she isn't?"

His expression is warm, almost affectionate, like we're talking about something else entirely.

"Faith," he says, finally. "Just like with all the other things we hope are true but might not be."

"That's some deep stuff right there," I say because apparently I'm still capable of being a sarcastic snarkhole for no good reason. He's unaffected, though, maybe even unaware.

"Ruby," he calls. "I'm taking off. Probably be gone an hour or so. These three can handle whatever comes up."

"Okay, Walter," Ruby calls back. "Tell Reyna I said hi."

Reyna? Doc Bloomfield's secretary?

He gives me this lightning quick, but crazy sexy half-smile, then says, "Will do, Ruby," and turns to go.

As he walks out the door, I'm thinking, thinking, thinking.

"Wow," I say, checking the time on my phone for effect, "I better go follow up on that warrant."

I get up, grab my jacket, and head for the door.

"I thought they were dropping it off," Bud calls after me.

"Maybe I misunderstood. I better go make sure."

I catch up to him at the bottom of the stairs, and he holds the door to the street open for me like a gentleman. I accept the act of chivalry without argument. When I walk past him, my shoulder grazes his chest.

Out on the sidewalk, he stops. The temperature has dropped probably ten degrees, but the snow specks are gone and the sky is brightening.

"Are you following me?" he says, voice low.

"You got an appointment."

The dimples. "I did. And I have something for you."

"I know you do," I say. It's nearly a whisper. Heat creeps up my neck.

"I've got two things for you then," he says, producing a torn-off piece of yellow legal paper from his jacket pocket.

I move closer to him and take it, purposely touching, feeling his fingers. Skin on skin.

His handwriting is on the big side and almost neat. It's never given me butterflies before.

"You did this for me?" I say, and it feels so raw emotionally that my instinct is to run, to protect myself.

But I don't.

"It's just a name and a phone number, Vic," he says, but he has to know it's not.

"I'll make an appointment."

He looks at his watch, then back at me, blue eyes squinting.

"Is this stupid?" I ask.

"Is what stupid?"

"This," I say, maintaining the covert operations volume. "Carefully orchestrating the consummation of our lust."

A grizzled farmer in a Carhartt jacket is walking down the sidewalk and pauses when he reaches us. We subtly back away from each other and turn towards him.

"Howdy, Walt," he says. "Deputy." He tips his straw hat at me. His heavily tanned and creased face is totally void of expression.

"Afternoon, Merle," Walt says.

"Smells like snow," Merle says.

"Sure does. Let's hope it holds off for another month."

"Hope in one hand and shit in the other," Merle says, then starts on his way again.

Walt looks over at the Bronco on the other side of the street then back at me. He gestures with his head, and I know what he means. It's part of the intimate code we're already developing.

I follow him across the street. He opens the driver's side door, and backs up into the junction between the door and side of the car. He grabs my hand and pulls me towards him, but not all the way. Not so that our bodies are touching.

"The consummation of our lust?" he says.

He lets go of my hand and sort of hovers in that place where he might be about to lean forward and plant one on me. There's no one around, but the office windows face out onto the street. We're definitely visible from up there.

"Let's go fishing," he says.

"What?"

"Fishing. Tomorrow."

"Ok," I say, though I have no idea how this would actually work.

"We've spent a lot of time together, but we've never spent time together with that as the objective. We need to do that prior to consummating."

He looks at his watch again.

"You should go," I say.

With the arm that is hidden by the door, he reaches over to me, under my unzipped jacket, and grabs hold of the material of my shirt at my side, right above my belt. He's not technically touching me, but I can feel the heat of his fingers. While still holding onto the shirt, he runs his thumb over the part of my stomach within range, lightly, and only once.

"I want to kiss you," I say.

He's looking down at me, slight smile, gears turning. "Tonight," he says. "I'll buy you dinner."

"I can't." I know I don't sound as disappointed as I feel. "I have plans."

"Tomorrow then," he says, and I truly appreciate that there is no weirdness whatsoever. Maybe I've finally outgrown drama. "Try to get that appointment for early afternoon, and tell Ruby you're taking comp time for the rest of the day. Tell her I approved it."

"Okay," I say.

He lets go of my shirt, winks at me, and gets in the car.

Just as I reach the other side of the street, and before Walt has pulled away from the curb, in other words at the worst possible time, I hear a man's voice calling first, "Deputy!" then "Vic!"

The judge, in his chinos and lime green gingham shirt, both fashionably rumpled, jogs across the street. He wears his aviators better than we do.

Walt still hasn't pulled away from the curb.

Slightly out of breath, Zeke hands me the envelope. "Here you go," he says. "Special delivery."

I know guys like this, all scripted and society and this season's catalogues. He's a caricature. He's the guy in movies who goes off the rails in middle age. Then it's all scripted and society in the daytime, cocaine and prostitutes at night. Life becomes entirely about balancing the light and the dark, but by this time, heaven and hell have switched places.

Though I can't quite figure out why, he reminds me of Sean.

"Thank you," I say, watching as the Bronco pulls away from the curb. "I appreciate the extra effort."

"Any time," he says because that's exactly what you're supposed to say.

Seconds later, I see the Bronco again. It's coming back our direction, and I'm thinking I don't want this. I'm tired of misunderstandings and I'm tired of jealousy.

"So I was wondering," Zeke starts, but then Walt drives past. He smiles, and I smile back and wave.

"That's the Sheriff," I say.

"Oh, yeah," Zeke says, doing a good job of acting interested. He waves, too.

I watch the tailgate recede in the distance, then I return my attention to Zeke.

"Yeah," I say. "I think I'm in love with him."


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Flight is just the flip side of the fight coin, and we all know I've got a pocket full of that one.

You know what else we all know? I have a big mouth.

My failure to think before speaking has, this time, left me teetering on the edge of a shadowy abyss.

A bit dramatic? Yeah, well, whatever. You didn't really believe I'd changed, did you?

For the past three hours I've been planning my escape. I could arrange it so that I never have to see him again. I could mail him my letter of resignation. I could pack my bags all through the night, taking only what's truly necessary, and by sunrise this godforsaken corner of the universe could be a speck in my review mirror. If I had my own car, that is.

My heart would be cold and safe again. But I have to get through this first.

I'm at the women's shelter in Sheridan. Once a month, Tabatha gives a free yoga class here, and I volunteered to join her this time. I thought it would be a good way to give back, get out of myself a little, you know, as part of my emotional and spiritual growth. At the time, I cared about that.

Regardless of how I'm feeling now, though, I do understand that these women have real problems, and I am committed to conveying balance, peace, and strength to the best of my current ability. To do that, I need to quiet my mind and flow through these Sun Salutation sequences without letting on that I'm having an emotional meltdown. That's not as easy as it sounds, even if it doesn't sound particularly easy.

_Mountain Pose_. What the fuck was I thinking?

_Upward Salute_. I've never even said it in the privacy of my own head. What would possess me to say it out loud to someone I don't even know?

_Fold_. This is not about the judge—I do not give a rat's ass about the judge.

_Lunge_. I do, however, feel a tad guilty and a lot hypocritical about being so judgmental of him.

_Plank_. I don't know what kind of person he is any more than you know what kind of person I am.

_Chaturanga_. We're all pawns in the twisted game of a critical culture.

_Cobra_. Or I'm just critical and judgmental.

_Downward-facing Dog_. I act out when I'm nervous.

_Fold_. Right now I'm terrified.

_Mountain Pose. _Sean has been gone three months.

_Upward Salute_. Sean and I were never "in love."

_Fold_. I guarantee he would not argue that.

_Lunge_. He had been in love before he met me.

_Plank_. She gave him an ultimatum; he refused to be controlled; she married someone better. It broke him.

_Chaturanga_. I married Sean knowing this.

_Cobra_. Sean married me knowing about Gorski.

_Downward-facing Dog_. We were both damaged, but it seemed like time to settle down.

_Fold_. I never learned to want what was best for him. He never learned to care how I feel.

_Mountain Pose. _I've never been in love before.

After class I lurk in the sidelines and observe. I want to reach out, but I don't know how.

Tabatha, who is all warmth and health and beauty, is on the other side of the room talking with one of the women, who looks like she's been trampled by life. The woman is probably around my age, and she has a fresh black eye. I'm assuming she arrived recently, maybe today. Standing next to her, Tabatha is everything the woman is not: she's long-limbed and smooth-skinned, and airy. Her brown hair is thick and shiny and streaked with grey that actually makes her look prettier. I realize I don't even know how old she is.

She has her hand on the woman's upper arm, and she's smiling, not just at but into the woman. I wish I could see the good in people the way she does. She sees talent and divinity in everyone, and it's not something she manufactures to make the person feel better or to gain approval for herself. She just seems to know where to look, and she seems to want to look there.

She sees me watching and calls me over, so I smile and I go, like I'm happy and like I want to.

Taking my hand, pulling me into the glow, she says, "Vic, this is Christine."

"Hey," I say, and I shake her hand. "Looks like someone did a number on you."

Immediately I'm wondering if that's inappropriate, if maybe it wouldn't have been better to act like I didn't notice, the way you're supposed to do with all glaring differences among people. But neither of them reacts one way or the other, and I'm relieved.

"My husband," Christine says. "It's the last time."

"I'm glad to hear that," I say, but I also know that statistically speaking, she's actually in more danger now. "Don't tell him where you are. Don't tell anyone, if that's possible."

"I haven't yet," she says. "The social worker explained that."

"You did a courageous thing in leaving," I say.

"I know," she says. "Thank you."

As we drive south into the misty glare of the northbound headlights, I'm better, but I'm still disturbed and I'm still restless. The most persistent thought I'm having, the one that's getting through all the other noise, is that I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't want to be the person who fears feeling, who equates emoting with suffering. I want to have faith that the most powerful feeling, the most painful loss, the most ecstatic love will not kill me, and if it does, I won't have to feel it anymore anyway. I want to get through this moment and make it to the moments I've been dreaming of without blowing it all up before I can get there.

"You okay, honey?" Tabatha asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, I'm great. Thanks. I'm glad I came tonight."

Outside, on this side of the highway, away from the southbound lights, it's rolling black hills blanketed by black clouds against a dark gray sky.

This isn't who I want to be.

"Actually, no," I say. "I'm not."

"Okay," she says, but she doesn't ask me if I want to talk about it or tell me she's here if I want to share. In other words, she doesn't do for me what I need to start doing for myself.

"There's this guy," I say.

"That's always exciting," she says, lightening it up.

"Yeah, it's definitely that."

There's a good chance she knows who the guy is, but for some reason, I want to tell it like she doesn't.

"I wouldn't say we're exactly seeing each other, but there's, um, stuff starting."

"Are you enjoying the stuff?" she asks.

"Oh my God, yes."

"But there's a problem."

"Yeah," I say. "This is going to sound very lame I'm sure, but I'm scared. I mean I'm really scared."

"Love is scary," she says, and my stomach lurches.

"Well, I wouldn't call it love exactly."

I'm such a liar.

"You wouldn't?" she asks. "What would you call it?"

I'm stumped. That's the problem with lies.

"Okay, maybe I would. But I don't want him to know I would call it that."

"You don't want him to know you love him?"

The panic is back, swirling around inside me, spreading to my fingertips. I feel cornered, like I need to get out of here, but I'm sarting to get that the only way out of this might be through it.

"Yes," I say. "I don't want him to know I love him."

I've got my elbows on my knees, head in my hands, and I'm staring into the darkness around my feet. I feel like I can't breathe, and I'm ashamed.

"You know what, Vic?" she says. "It's hard to be vulnerable. It's hard to give another person that kind of power and to trust them to treat it like the fragile thing it is. Fortunately, you're the one who gets to decide whether or not this person can be trusted with something as valuable and sensitive as your heart."

"He's pretty trustworthy on the whole."

"And that still doesn't mean you won't get hurt."

"I know," I say.

Tabatha slows for a pronghorn and two babies to dart across the highway. They get killed out here all the time. I sit back up, take a deep, lavender aromatherapy breath.

"Do you know who the guy is?"

"I think so," she says. "But only because there's only one man I've ever seen you with."

"You mean not because Henry told you."

"Right. That's what I mean."

"You know," she says, "there's nothing saying you can't just love him for now without telling him."

"You're right," I say. "Thank you."

Besides, he probably already knows.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

It's one of those blustery, characteristically fall mornings with the hazy, orangey-brown light that makes me think of pumpkins and Thanksgiving and getting older.

I spend too much of my three and a half hours at work staring out the window onto Main Street, trying to predict the future and creating contingency plans for anything that has even the remotest possibility of breaking my heart between now and the end of time.

They are the three and a half slowest hours of my entire life.

You'd think the day before a major multi-agency operation, the office would be bustling, but I seem to be the only one, at least among the deputies, accepting the truth: We're just the puppets out front in all of this. The vast majority of planning and coordination has already been done by the animal rights people and the FBI. They've done it dozens of times before, all over the U.S., and they have over-produced videos with heart-wrenching soundtracks on YouTube to prove it. Technically, it's our raid because it's our county, but beyond that, we aren't too involved, so far at least.

By the time I leave for my appointment, it's two hours until Walt picks me up, and both the idea of that and the impending doctor's visit have me feeling a bit tense.

The physician's name is Dr. Storkan. She's well under five feet tall, and my estimation is that she is in her early 80s. No, that is not some lame attempt at being insulting, and it's definitely not to say that she isn't entirely competent.

As it turns out, I weigh five pounds more than I thought I did, and due to the stress induced by this seemingly insignificant piece of data, my heart rate is up to a level that suggests I haven't been fulfilling my duty to stay in shape for my job. Then, as I'm attempting to nurture my understandably wounded pride, I am violated under fluorescent lights by a plastic vice grip slathered in refrigerated KY while someone asks me what I do for a living. As a bonus, two vials of blood are sucked from my arm, and when I say I'd rather not watch, the nurse smirks because she was there when I said what kind of work I do, and you know, I'm expected to be tough.

When I'm sufficiently leveled and mildly depressed, Dr. Storkan totters back into the room and asks me in her crackly tenor if I'm sexually active.

"Why?" I ask. "Was something wrong?"

"No," she says, like she thinks I might be a bit on the slow side. "This is a standard line of questioning."

It's possible she's making fun of me.

"I'm recently divorced," I say.

"So you're not currently sexually active?"

"Umm. Actually, maybe I am a little."

"A little?" she asks.

"There's a guy," I say.

"And you are having intercourse with this man?"

"No, not really."

If she didn't think I was dumb before, I've definitely won her over now.

"All right," she says, writing on the chart. "Are you not really having intercourse with more than one man currently?"

"No," I say. "It's just the one."

"And you say you're taking birth control."

"Yes."

"Are you satisfied with it?" she asks.

"Well, it's done what it's supposed to do, I guess."

"And what is your plan for guarding against sexually transmitted disease?"

"I'd like to be tested for everything," I say.

She looks up from the chart, over her gold rimmed readers, and makes this face that I think could be described as a smile.

"That's a responsible approach," she says. "Has the man been tested?"

"Yes."

"And he's healthy?"

"Actually, I haven't asked him. But before proceeding, I'll find out."

She tells me that since it's before 1:00 PM and the hospital is next door, results of blood tests come back the same day, and for some weird reason, this makes my stomach drop.

"Someone will call you with the results this afternoon," she says, then she excuses herself.

As I'm driving home, I'm both excited and petrified.

I'm ready fifteen minutes before he's supposed to get here, and as a result, I have plenty of time to work myself up into a nervous frenzy.

My day pack is ready by the door, and in it is the lunch I offered to pack for us with a small thermos of Irish coffee, some dog biscuits, and a microfiber towel for use as a picnic blanket.

When he pulls up, I walk outside to meet him, taking a proactive approach where my neurosis is concerned. He's wearing faded jeans with a hole in one knee and an untucked faded black shirt, frayed at the sleeves and the collar, with a white T-shirt underneath. His hair is shiny and a little messed up. In other words, he looks unbelievably hot.

"Hey," I say, trying to sound chill, like there is nothing out of the ordinary about what we're doing.

"Hey," he says with that warm smile I'd never seen prior to the past few weeks.

I'm not sure if I should hug him or what, so I don't, and he doesn't make a move, either.

"This is going to sound super rude, this being our first date and all . . . ," I start.

"It's not our first," he says. "We went for a drink at the Red Pony."

"That wasn't exactly a date," I say.

"It ended like a date," he says.

"Like a lukewarm date." Obviously, I'm messing with him.

"I was prepared to offer something quite a bit hotter."

Okay then.

Now he's messing with me.

"Can we get back on track here?" I say.

He nods and says, "Sure," smiling like he thinks he's pretty funny.

"Is it okay if Rufus comes with us?"

"Yeah, of course," he says.

"He's going home tomorrow night," I say.

"Really?" He takes my pack from me and opens the tailgate. "That's too bad."

"I know, huh? I shouldn't have gotten so attached to him. Now I'll spend the rest of my days pining for the time we had together."

"I'll keep your mind off it," he says with a wink.

If we're starting like this, we're going to be hard pressed to get any eating or fishing done.

As we head west, there are thunderheads on the horizon. I don't mention them, and neither does he.

He's got his right arm stretched out onto the wheel and the other hand on his thigh, classic Walt Longmire driving posture, and he has sort of a dreamy expression on his face.

"Walt?" I say.

He looks at me just for a second and smiles.

"I know we've spent probably hundreds of hours in the car like this, but I'm seriously nervous right now."

He reaches over and takes my hand, then squints into the rearview mirror.

"I can fix that," he says, and he pulls over onto the wide dirt shoulder.

He checks the rearview again, and peers through the front window down the highway towards the mountains, then he slides over, puts his arms around my waist and pulls me towards him, and he kisses me.

It's all warm and smooth, with a lot of tongue, and it has a lighted-headed, first-drink-of-the-night effect on me, which was I guess the objective.

When he pulls back, he says, "Better?"

"You smell so good," I say because my brain isn't working properly.

He smiles and looks at me for a long time, like he's working himself up to something.

Then he says, "I love being with you, Vic," and he slides back, puts his seatbelt on, and assumes his driving posture as he pulls back onto the highway.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

It takes maybe forty-five minutes, mostly on dirt road to get to the trailhead, then it's about a two mile hike to the lake. Walking out there, together and alone, we're the way we used to be back before all the trouble. We're actually talking.

The trail crests about a mile and a half in, and then we descend into a bowl created by the surrounding mountains. It looks like a fall scene in one of those snow globes with it's perfectly placed trees and boulders and a small emerald lake in the middle.

At the shore, we find a grassy spot and we put our blankets down. We're at around 6,000 feet, and it's noticeably colder than it was just 1,500 feet lower at home. Rufus excuses himself to explore, and I pull my down jacket out of my pack. I put it on with a knit beanie, and Walt buttons up his sheriff's coat.

We sit on the blanket, looking out at the lake, eating the sandwiches and drinking the coffee, which gives me a slight buzz. When we're finished, Walt moves behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. I lean back into his chest.

He kisses my ear.

I twist around in his arms to look at him. "I love being with you, too, Walt."

Then, of course, it starts.

We reposition, lying next to each other, bodies touching from head to toe, and we embark on a serious twenty minute make-out session, despite the forty degree wind coming at us from across the water. When he rolls me onto my back, though, and moves on top of me, I sense we're about to repeat our late-night romp in the office, and I say, "We came here to fish. We should fish."

Looking a little sheepish, he sits up, slips a hand down his pants, and adjusts himself in a way that gets me tingling in all the important places and very nearly changes my mind.

"That might have been a ploy," he says. "But fishing would be fun, too."

I put my collapsible fishing rod together, and lie it down on the blanket.

"That's an interesting fishing rod you've got there," he says.

"I got it when I was in Girl Scouts and it's totally functional," I say, standing up. "I'll tell you what—don't make fun of my rod and I'll try not to make fun of yours."

He laughs. "Fair enough."

"I better round up Rufus before we start. I'd hate to have to explain how he got eaten by a grizzly the day before they got back."

I walk along the squishy grass at the water's edge, calling for Rufus to no avail. When I reach the rocks, I go around them, up towards the tree line. Still no dog. At this point, I'm maybe a hundred yards or more from where Walt is baiting the hooks, and I'm starting to get a little worried.

The sky is completely clouded over, which is good because the temperature shouldn't drop as fast, but bad, of course, because it could rain.

When the bank becomes grassy again, I return to the shore, still calling.

Just as my imagination is beginning to formulate a gory scenario detailing Rufus' demise, I hear what can only be described as the grunt of a pig, but much deeper and in reverse. It's coming from behind me, from where the tree line is closest to the water. I turn just in time to see Rufus charging out of the trees much faster than I have ever seen him move, followed by a cow moose, kicking her front legs forward and sort of trotting, but covering a lot of ground quickly.

Panicking, I look for the nearest tree, but somehow, with all the trees out here, I'm in a pretty open area. Then I look at the water, not an ideal option, but probably better than getting rammed by a determined mother moose.

Rufus is now running in a zigzag like he can't decide which way to go, and apparently that's unappealing to the cow because she slows down considerably.

"Here, Rufus!" I yell, taking the opportunity that has presented itself, and hoping she doesn't shift her focus to me. "I'm right here."

But as soon as he sets his homing device on me, I realize the mistake I've made. He's tearing across the landscape, getting closer every second. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Walt standing at the shoreline maybe a hundred and fifty yards away, watching us.

Honestly, I don't even have time to escape. Rufus flies over the rocks like they're nothing, and he's got his eyes trained on me, tail tucked under, ears back. I point to the side and yell, "That way, Rufus!" because apparently I have no memory of this dog's limited mental agility.

The moose has now stopped, and her babies are hiding behind her, watching the horror unfold. Rufus clears the last rock, and when he hits the squishy, grassy bank, his speed seems to actually increase. Before I can even plan for the eventuality, he slams right into me. For the physics nerds among us, that's a 75 pound dog mass with a 20 mile per hour velocity creating an impact force of really fucking hard. As in I'm-lucky-it-didn't-break-my-femurs hard. I am launched into the lake, and a split second later, Rufus lands on me.

The next thing I know, I'm standing in chest deep water hyperventilating. My head is dripping, and my ears are throbbing, so I know I've been completely immersed, but I don't remember it. I'm a hundred times more aware of the cold wind than I was five minutes ago, and the shivering starts. Alarmed, but unable to move my body quickly, I realize Rufus is missing. When I'm finally able to turn myself around, I see that somehow he's ended up maybe twenty feet out into the lake, and he's swimming around in circles like the dog that he is.

I hear Walt's voice, but I can't tell where it's coming from. He's yelling, "Vic! Get out of the water!" like I'm some sort of idiot.

My teeth start chattering, and then inexplicably, he's there on the bank.

"D-don't g-get w-w-wet," I say to him. Fortunately I know he's just as aware as I am of how counterproductive two people with hypothermia would be.

"Then come on," he says, holding his hand out to me. "Get out."

"I have t-to g-g-get the d-d-d . . . ."

"Dog?" he says, totally exasperated. "No."

"Yes."

At this point I'm stiff and shaking violently, but I do manage, even with my feet sticking to the silty bottom, to wade out towards Rufus.

"R-r-rufus!" I try to yell, but I'm not getting much volume, so instead I try to speed up, which doesn't work, either.

When I finally reach him, he's still swimming around in circles, like he's in shock. I have very little control over my motor functions, especially in my hands. I reach for his collar twice before I'm able to sort of grab it, though closing my fingers is virtually impossible.

"Come, Rufus," Walt calls.

"G-g-go, Rufus," I say, and he does. I hold on as best I can, and he manages to pull me most of the way to shore.

When I get within reach, Walt grabs my hand and pulls me out.

"D-don't g-g-get w-wet, W-w-w . . . ."

"I know," he says, all serious and annoyed. "We have to move fast." Then he looks up at the sky, and I know what he's thinking.

It's this right here that gets people dead out in the wilderness. A perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances builds, and they're not prepared either physically or mentally or both because they operate under the assumption that stuff like this doesn't happen to them.

"Start up the trail and move as fast as you can," he says. "You feel okay?"

"I'm r-r-really f-f-cold, and my h-hands d-don't w-w-work." My teeth are chattering like one of those haunted house denture sets.

"Okay. Don't talk, just go. I'll catch up with you in a few minutes." He points up the hill. "You see the trail, right?"

I nod.

"Okay. Go," he says.

I start up the hill, heading towards the trail, and I feel like I've got cold steel poles in place of my bones. I'm slipping on the loose dirt and rocks so it's literally one step forward, two back, and the shivering has now spread so that every inch of me seems to be convulsing.

Rufus is walking next to me, but he looks like he feels completely normal, if not maybe a tad guilty.

Walt doesn't catch up to us until the crest, and he's breathing really hard. He's got both packs on and both hands full. Up on the ridge, the wind is whistling through the trees. He stops me and wraps both my towel and his blanket around my shoulders, and shows me where to hold them in the front, though holding them with my numb fingers is challenging.

"Let m-me carry the p-p-pack," I say.

"No," he says. "Just keep going."

It took us forty-five minutes to hike to the lake, and it takes over an hour to get back to the car because I'm so slow and uncoordinated.

I'm starting to feel sleepy, too, but I don't tell him because he already seems worried that I keep tripping over roots and rocks that really shouldn't present a problem.

As soon as we get there, he starts the engine and blasts the heat, then moves me into the doorway.

"You have to take your clothes off," he says.

I'm not paying attention, though.

He shakes my shoulders. "Stay awake, Vic," he says. "We have to get the wet clothes off."

I'm only even remotely aware that this should be a total turn on, but isn't.

I try to unzip the jacket, but with no feeling in my fingers, it's taking way too long.

"It's too hard," I say.

He takes the blankets and the towel off me, and he actually looks like he feels bad.

"Your lips are blue, Vic. You're going to be fine, but we have to get you warm and dry."

He unzips my jacket, and I'm able to slowly pull it off my arms, but I'm taking too long even with that, and he starts helping me. He pulls my fleece over my head, then my shirt, and then he helps me get my boots and my pants off. I'm just in my underwear and bra when he stops, and he says, "You have to finish this fast."

I'm able to get my underwear off, but the bra is another story, and he has do to it. I'm aware that I should be embarrassed, but I don't really even care.

It's only then that I notice he's just in a T-shirt. He reaches onto the seat behind me then starts putting his black shirt on me. He buttons it all the way up the front quickly, then he puts his coat on top and buttons that up. He lifts me onto the passenger seat and puts his socks on me then the seatbelt.

He puts two Indian blankets over my legs and a wool beanie on my head, then closes the door and goes around to his side.

The cab is warm, and the shivering is waning slightly. I must be recovering at least a little because I suddenly feel terrible for ruining our date.

"I'm sorry, Walt," I say.

He puts his hand up to my cheek, and I feel a little warmth from it. "It's okay. We just have to deal with this. You know that."

"I do," I say.

"Don't go to sleep," he says.

"I won't."


	27. Chapter 27

**First of all, thanks again for all your kind words and your interest in the story.**

**I realize this is highly unusual. The only reason I fired off three in less than 24 hours, midweek no less, is the entire organization I work for had the day off yesterday. And one of these was already written. The point is it's not likely to happen again for a while, but I wanted to take advantage of the time I had.**

**Also, this one might be a little "M." ; )**

* * *

Chapter 27

"I thought we talked about you putting timers in," he says as we pull into the driveway.

"That was only like five days ago. I've been kind of busy since then."

He turns on the dome light and tilts my chin up so he can see my lips. I can tell by the way they feel that they aren't blue anymore.

He takes my hands. "Fingertips?" he asks.

"They're fine. I feel warmish now."

"Warmish?"

"I'm no longer dying," I say.

He gets out and walks around the front of the Bronco, and he opens my door.

I move the blanket off my legs, and I'm suddenly aware of just how undressed I am. I swing my legs out. The cold is a shock to my lower half and my wet head.

"Want me to carry you?" he says.

"I can't let you do that. I can get there in fifteen steps. Twenty at the most. I won't wreck your socks, I promise."

"I'm not worried about the socks, Vic."

I step down and bolt across the gravel into the dark walkway. Seconds later Rufus follows, and then I hear Walt's boots.

"Crap," I say.

"What?"

"I forgot the keys."

He jingles them, and when he reaches me, he feels for my hand, and gives them to me.

"We had a moment here," I say as I'm examining the keys by Braille, trying to find the right one. "Remember that?"

I feel his hand, warm on the back of my neck, under my still damp hair, then his lips where his hand was.

"We could have another one if you want," he says.

It takes very little for him to get me flustered and sparked, especially now that my vital signs seem to have returned to normal, and it is impeding my ability to get the door open. When I finally do, Rufus nudges his way past me, making a bee line for his water bowl.

I turn on the porch light, and Walt closes the door. He puts my backpack down in the entryway and it's the first time I remember the phone. I kneel down in front of my backpack and dig through the pocket to find it. There is a voicemail, and it's from Dr. Storkan's office.

Everything came back normal.

When he's finished lapping up the entire contents of his bowl, Rufus gets in his bed and curls up. He doesn't even ask for food.

"That took a lot out of him," I say, turning on the lamp next to the couch in the living room.

"Yeah. Poor Rufus," Walt says, and it's sarcastic, which is unusual.

"Don't be mad at the dog," I say. "He's only a dog. Be mad at the human."

He smiles and starts walking towards me, and I'm suddenly very aware that I'm standing here in his jacket, his shirt, his socks, and absolutely nothing else.

Rufus has one eye on me, like I'm making him uncomfortable.

"I should change," I say, but I make no move to do that.

Walt looks down at me, and I can tell he's lost in his head somewhere. His hair is wind-blown and his face is flushed, and his eyes are that wild blue they become sometimes.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

My mind wants to start spinning tales, creating the scenario that proves just how broken I can expect my heart to be, but I shut it down. It might happen, I remind myself, but it's not likely to happen tonight.

He closes his eyes for a moment, almost like he's trying to remember something.

Then he opens them and steps closer. He brings his hand up to the top button on the shirt, and he pauses there.

"Walt, what?"

"Nothing," he says, and he leans down and kisses me, super lightly. Then with the other hand he touches my cheek, and he kisses me again, a little deeper, a little wetter, a little harder, but slow.

He pulls back and starts a hyper-focused unbuttoning of the shirt. It's slow, and it's methodical, and it's driving me insane. But then suddenly he's done, and I feel like I'm not ready, like I shouldn't have been in such a hurry.

His hand, light and warm and calloused, is on the bare skin at my side, and I flinch. He slides it down and around to the small of my back, and pulls me closer.

Then his other hand is there, and it seems huge, inside the jacket, inside the shirt, and up, really touching me, and his breath is hot on the skin at my collarbone.

He opens the shirt, lowers his head, and uses his tongue. I feel dizzy. I bury my fingers and then my face in his hair, inhale his man shampoo and sweat scent. Both hands are around my back now, squeezing my entirely uncovered ass, and then while my head is swimming, there's the part I'm genuinely not expecting: He moves one hand around my hip, down where I really wasn't imagining he would go, not yet at least, and this time I really flinch, and it sucks the wind out of me. He's gentle, though, and he's respectful, and he's good at it. I'm breathing hard and my head is floating. An involuntary moan slips out, and then my face heats up and I cringe a little because I'm intensely self-conscious about the effect he has on me.

I have to move his hand, stop him because I'm already close to losing it.

"What?" he says, breathing hard near my ear.

"I'm almost there already."

"That's okay," he says.

"No," I say. "When it happens, I want it to be together."

He smiles, holds my face in his hands, and kisses me, and I realize just how hard it's going to be to not tell him how I feel because I can't stop thinking the words. It's the dominant thought and the dominant feeling, and it seems to have more control over any of this than I do.

"Just a couple more days," he says.

I run my hand deliberately over the ridge up the front of his jeans. "Maybe not."

"What?"

"Did you get yours?" I ask.

He stares at me. "Yeah, but you didn't."

"Yours are okay, right?"

"Yeah," he says, confused.

I'm still touching him, like it's this completely acceptable form of casual human contact.

"I did get mine," I say.

He's still staring at me.

"Really," I say.

He tilts his head to the side, expressionless.

Then he's back. He pushes his jacket off my shoulders, and now I'm standing there in just his shirt, unbuttoned all the way down to my knees, and his socks. He pulls his T-shirt over his head and throws it onto the couch.

I actually gasp.

I've seen his chest before, seen him half-naked, but it's a whole lot different when it's okay for me to feel what I feel about it.

He bends down and pulls off one boot, then the other, and when he stands up, he's got his hands on his belt. He's straining hard against his jeans now, the bulge pulling the material around the fly tight, which is kind of an accomplishment considering how loose he wears his pants.

He's looking at me, like he's waiting for confirmation.

"Do it," I whisper.

He unbuckles his belt, looking at me the whole time.

Then he unbuttons his pants, and his boxers, dark blue with paisleys, creased like they're brand new, are peaking out. He drops the jeans and steps out of them, and there he is, standing in front of me, in just his underwear. His bare legs are long and muscular, and they're hairy like the rest of him. The fly of the boxers is gaping, and it's very revealing, and I'm overcome with this inconceivable yearning.

He's got his thumbs hooked in the elastic waistband, and he's looking in my eyes, beyond the surface, like he's searching for something, like he's trying to know what neither of us can possibly know at this point.

"There's no going back once I do this," he says.

"I don't want to go back. Do you?"

He shakes his head. "No."

And he does it.

The boxers are down, and he steps out of them, and he's right there in front of me, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined because he's real, he's actual warm blood flowing beneath warm skin, he's actual living human matter. He is no longer just elusive images in dreamscape.

"Holy fuck, Walt," I say. "I'm seriously impressed."

He says, "Stop," embarrassed maybe, and pulls me to him, so he's right there, smooth, hot, and hard against my stomach. He pushes his shirt off my shoulders, and he kisses my neck.

It's suddenly like something I wasn't even aware of before is now painfully missing, and I need it replaced, I need the void filled now.

We move to the couch, and he pulls me onto his lap, and this time around, there's no barrier between us, there are no jeans to keep us apart. He looks up at me, and brings his hand up to my cheek, as if to say this is it, this is the last chance, the chicken exit.

But I don't want out. I'm beyond ready.

I lean forward and kiss him, then I take hold of him, super gently, and he reacts with this sharp intake of air that startles me. I look in his eyes, and I'm thinking, I am in love with you, Walt.

Then I lower myself onto him slowly, completely.

The fuse is lit.

"Oh my God," I whisper.

He squeezes my hips to steady me and says, all airy and intense, "Don't move. I'm really close."

"Me, too," I say, my breathing off kilter.

It takes all my will and every last ab muscle to lean forward into him without moving my lower body, but I have to get closer. I wrap my arms around his torso carefully, and I rest my cheek against his.

This must be what it's like to work on the bomb squad.

"I want this to go on forever," he whispers in my ear.

There's, of course, more than one way that can be taken.

"I want it to go on forever, too," I say, fighting vague with vague. "So don't make any sudden movements."

This triggers one of his single syllable laughs, and it jars us, and that's all it takes to ignite.

It's on.

Once with the jar, then a second time harder, and one last time, deep, followed by some guttural, primal sound effects from both of us, and it's over.

I lie my head on his shoulder and my hand on his chest, and I can feel his heart beating. I'm ashamed to admit that I feel like I might cry.

And, you know, I'd like to say it's all golden and sparkly in the afterglow, but in reality, love is messy. I give him a kitchen towel, and I run off to the bathroom, and then we lie down on the couch together, spooned under the faux lamb's wool blanket, and drift off into the next phase of this thing I guess we're really doing now.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Floodgates and all that.

It's just before midnight when I wake up and realize whose long, hairy arm is draped over my side. The lights are still on, and Rufus is sound asleep and snoring in his bed by the TV.

I hold my breath and turn carefully onto my back, but the movement wakes him.

He smiles, still half asleep then nestles is face in my neck and runs a hand up my body.

"Hey," he says, all deep and growly.

"Hey."

"How did we end up like this?"

He yawns, and it makes me yawn.

"Well," I say, running my fingers through his hair, "about three years ago, I applied for a job you posted." I kiss his forehead.

He pulls me closer to him and pushes against my thigh.

"We should give it another shot, don't you think?"

"Definitely," I say. "I can set aside fifteen seconds."

He lifts his head and somehow slides me under him, all in one movement, and he pins my wrists to the couch. Looking down at me, hair in his eyes, upper body between my legs, he smiles.

"I've been in a constant state of arousal for a week, Vic," he says. "I think it went pretty well, considering."

"That's what your hand is for."

He actually seems surprised, like all the other inappropriate and vulgar comments I've made in the time we've known each other didn't prepare him for this one. But he's got this sort of mischievous expression on his face, too.

"Why do you think it lasted as long as it did?" he says.

"Oh my God," I whisper. "I'm so turned on."

He pushes the coffee table out of the way and lowers me to the rug, then lowers himself on top of me, in cobra pose.

"I can help you with that," he says, pushing one of my knees to the side with his knee, then the other.

"Please do."

This time it's raucous and cardiovascular and sweaty, and when we're done and tidied up, we sit on either end of the couch, legs intertwined, and eat what I was able to find: a couple of apples, some baked Cheetos, celery, a few slices of cheese, and Greek yogurt, which he obviously thinks is gross but doesn't want to tell me.

Rufus gets up, I feed him, and he goes back to bed.

The next time we wake up, it's dark. I reach over to the coffee table, and check the time on my phone. It's 5:12.

"We've got a big day ahead," he says into my back.

"I know."

I sit up. The sight of him here in the fading blue glow from my phone, lying on my couch, naked under my blanket, makes me feel lucky, like I'm somehow getting more than any one person deserves.

There have been so many moments in my life up to this point for which I should have felt blessed but didn't. This right here, this situation that I had believed, not so long ago, was never going to happen, makes me want to appreciate what I have while I have it.

I get up and put his T-shirt on since that's all that's available, and I start making the coffee. Rufus clicks into the kitchen with me and watches.

"I need to take a shower," I say as I'm pouring the water in. "You want to go first?"

He's sitting up now, scratching his head and looking around.

"Yeah," he says. "I probably should. It'll wake me up."

He puts his boxers on and we go upstairs. So far he's been using the half bathroom off the living room, but the only shower is in the master bath.

Taking him into the bedroom feels strange somehow, like I'm disrespecting Sean or even maybe like I'm disrespecting Walt. Rationally, I know I'm not doing either—I mean, I've been sleeping alone for three months—but emotionally it's a block of some sort.

When I turn on the light in the bathroom, I see that he might be feeling a little weird about it, too. I don't think either of us has any problem with doing what we did where we did it, but bedrooms, especially when they used to belong to someone else, seem more sacred, maybe even more intimate. Issues surrounding boundaries and habitat are complicated.

I hand him a towel and he takes it. He looks like he's about to say something.

"What?"

"You're planning on joining me, right?" he says.

Actually, I hadn't been.

I've always thought showering with another person was totally impractical, but I have to remind myself he's here now. We're not late, he's sexy as hell, and practicality is overrated anyway.

"Of course," I say.

Somehow, with the major distraction and excessive stimulation, I do manage to take a fairly decent shower, but we waste a lot of water, and I feel kind of guilty about that.

Afterwards, he lifts me onto the counter, and we have a steamy and vocal round three before he gathers his things and a cup of coffee to go, and heads home to change clothes.

I get dressed for work, and as usual, I leave my shoes, my holster, and my jacket off while I go through my morning routine. That's why it's not until ten minutes to seven that I realize I don't have my boots.

Immediately I call his house, but the machine picks up. On the off chance that he hasn't left for work yet and is just screening his calls, I leave a message: "Hey, Walt. Umm, my boots are still in the back of your car. I kind of need them. Could you call me back?"

I hang up and call the office. Ruby answers.

"Hey, Ruby, is Walt in yet?"

"He was here," she says, "but he stepped out about ten minutes ago."

"Okay," I say. "If he comes back in the next few minutes, could you ask him to call me?"

"Sure thing, Vic. Everything all right?"

"Oh, yeah. I just wanted to tell him something about the warrant."

"I could tell him for you, if you'd like," she offers.

"Thanks, Ruby, but it's a little complicated. I'll just talk to him when I see him."

Shit.

Since I can't envision a scenario that would render me still bootless by the time I need to enter the office, I leave for work wearing my running shoes, which are fluorescent orange with blue stripes.

When I arrive at the station, though, I can't find a parking spot closer than two blocks away. All curb space surrounding the square and up and down Main Street is occupied by black Suburbans with tinted windows, state trooper vehicles, a Humane Society fifth wheel attached to a dually, and various other vehicles that I assume are involved in the madness in some capacity. There are people standing around on the sidewalks and in the park, drinking coffee, eating pastries, and chatting, but there's no sign of Walt.

The Bronco is double parked right in front of the office.

Avoiding eye contact with the loiterers, I walk right up to the Bronco like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I check the tailgate, and it's locked. Then I check both the driver and the passenger door. I feel like I'm entering the Twilight Zone.

As soon as I open the door to the office, there's a camera with a bright bulb attached above it in my face. I instinctively hold up my hand to obstruct the camera's view, and I say, maybe a bit too frantically, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who the hell are you? Get that thing out of my face."

Ruby walks across the office and looks up at the young cameraman.

"Mr. Smith," she says. "Did I not just tell you that the Sheriff said no to all filming?"

"She isn't the Sheriff," he says, playing dumb.

"Sir, I'm only going to say this one more time, and then I'm going to have you deal with one of the deputies or the Sheriff himself. There will be no filming of any department employees. You have two other law enforcement groups out there. Pester them."

Just then, Ferg walks through the door, and I swear, before he looks at anything else, his eyes go directly to my feet.

He snickers a little. "What's up with the shoes, Vic?" he asks, like I'm the dorky kid and he's the bully.

"What's up with being an asshole?" I say, way too defensive.

He gives me that disgusted look he'd packed away for a while. "Maybe you need to get more sleep," he says, and I bite.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He looks at me like he's trying to figure out what's going on, and he seems to come to the conclusion that something is wrong with me.

He tempers his tone when he says, "It means maybe you need to get more sleep. It was a response to your irritability."

He shakes his head, and I am certain he rolls his eyes when he looks at Ruby, but I can only see the back of his head, so it wouldn't be right to kick his ass for it.

"My boots got wet," I say even though I'm fairly certain he's done talking to me, "so I left them in the car. I'll put them on when we leave."

"Okay," he says, "whatever."

I'm waiting for him to ask me how they got wet, but he doesn't, and I don't volunteer an explanation, mostly because I don't have one.

It's maybe fifteen minutes later when Walt comes in, and it's at the precise moment that Ferg is returning to his desk from the bathroom.

The whole thing happens in slow motion.

I stand up, determined to get the shoe situation dealt with quickly and discreetly, and I notice he has the boots in his hand.

Ferg says, "Morning, Sheriff," and he looks down at the boots.

"Didn't see your car, Ferg," Walt says.

"Have you seen the parking situation?" Ferg says.

"Yeah," he says, scratching his head. "Pretty bad."

I'm sort of glaring at Walt, like I want him to do something fast, but honestly, I have no idea what I want him to do.

So I say with delayed astonishment, "Hey, where did you find those?" I don't give him time to answer before adding, "I must have left those on the curb. How weird."

I take them from him and walk back to my desk.

"Your truck's on 2nd Street," Ferg says.

"So?"

"Walt was down at the other end of the park."

"So? Maybe he found them earlier."

"Yeah," Walt says, "but luckily I found them." He sounds like he's reciting lines for a really bad play.

Ferg looks at me, then at Walt, then at me again.

Ruby saves us by coming out with her Post-its, and starting to give Walt the rundown: "I told Jason Smith four times to stop filming, Lucian called and says he will be ready at 8:00 for you to pick him up . . . ."

"For what?" Walt asks, looking at the note.

"He says you asked him to help with the raid today."

"How did he even know about the raid?"

Ruby shrugs.

"Call him back, please, and tell him he's not invited and I'll see him tomorrow."

"Oh, and this one from Vic, but I'll let her explain that."

I'm staring at the screen of my laptop, trying to pull off both busy and invisible.

"What's up with the warrant?" he asks.

"Huh?"

"The warrant?"

"Oh," I say. "Misunderstanding. Never mind."

"Okay," he says with a sigh and a hand on his hip. "So we've got about an hour. Vic, you and Bud will go in ahead of us to serve the warrant, and the circus will follow. Ferg, I need you to go down to the basement and bring up the vests."

"Vests?" I ask. "Why?"

"Because the last eighteen times we got shot at, we weren't wearing them, and at some point our luck will run out."

"Sure, Walt," Ferg says.

"Okay then," Walt says, and before he turns to go, our eyes lock, just for a second.

Images of the shower and the living room floor and the bathroom counter flash in my mind in HD. I look away quickly, ears burning.

I take a deep breath, listening to the sound of his boots on the wood floor.

This is going to be harder than I thought.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Ferg brings the vests in two in at a time.

They say SHERIFF on the upper back in yellow and again smaller on the front right. I don't even have to check the tags to figure out which one is mine. It's the Mini Me to Walt's extra-large.

Bud is pretty close to the same size as Branch, and since he's from the big city, at least by Wyoming standards, he figures his out faster than Ferg and I do. In my own defense, I haven't had one on since Philly, and that was a concealable Level III. This thing is a monster.

"Why'd you buy riot gear?" Bud asks, trying out various cop postures, making sure they all still work. "This weighs like forty pounds."

Soon after I was hired, I applied for a Department of Justice grant to update our body armor. I chose Level IV instead of the more practical Level III because I figured we don't wear them anyway, so we might as well get the grade recommended for particularly dangerous situations.

The vests arrived, the DOJ reimbursed us, then we promptly relegated them to the basement for safe keeping. If I hadn't forgotten about them, I would have felt bad before now.

"It's not riot gear," I tell Bud as I ease mine over my head like it's packed with explosives. "And they're only thirteen pounds, give or take."

"Yeah," he says, backslapping Ferg's ceramic plate. "Give or take twenty-five pounds."

"Yeah," Ferg says, but he's not listening. He's engrossed in situating the side strap, which he rips open for a third time, lines up and sticks back down.

"That's some rapid calculation, Bud. They teach you that in Casper?"

"Cheyenne," he corrects me because, you know, there's a big difference. "They taught us how to put armor on, which I guess is more than we can say for Philadelphia."

"Check this out," I say, pointing out the window at the FBI agents milling around on the sidewalk. "These guys are wearing the same thing."

I'm feeling kind of top-heavy, so I hold onto the windowsill and adjust my footing in order to avoid slamming to the floor like a felled pine.

"You think that's why the Sheriff's having us wear them?" he asks, looking over my shoulder. "So we don't come off like ignorant rednecks next to the traveling taskforce."

I say, "Maybe," but considering how out of character that would be, I hope not.

I brace myself for Ferg's judgmental stink-eye in response to the suggestion that I might be privy to Walt's motivations, but he's too busy tugging down on the vest in front while trying to see something on his back.

"You think there'll be shooting?" Ferg asks. He doesn't sound particularly concerned, nor does he seem to remember my cranky outburst from less than an hour ago.

"I doubt it," I say. "With these odds, I can't imagine them trying anything."

"They don't know the odds," Ferg says.

"They'll know soon enough," says Bud.

When I knock on Walt's partially open door, he's the phone, but he waves me in.

He watches me walk over to the couch where I drop his vest.

"Yup," he says to whoever is on the other end. "Got it."

I do the whole Vanna White demo to show off my bulletproof attire. I point out the SHERIFF on the front then turn around and model the back in an entirely inappropriate way.

When I face him again, he's blushing.

"Yeah," he says. "Still here."

I start moving towards the door, but he stands up and mouths, "Wait."

"Okay," he says. "No problem."

My eyes land on his belt. I can't help it.

"Thanks. Be there shortly." He hangs up.

I drag my gaze upwards, over his chest, over the hair at the collar, over his strong chin and his lips.

His lips.

"What?" I say.

His eyes are dark and hungry.

"That was the surveillance team," he says in that same tone, with that same depth he uses to weaken me.

He walks towards the couch and therefore towards me. On reflex, even now, I back away from him to create at least a small safety zone between me and the heat.

"And?" I ask.

"Van der Horn's there. Business as usual," he says, picking up the vest. "Can you help me with this?"

"Is that a good idea?"

He lifts it over his head with a little grunt.

"Not light, is it?" he says.

"You'll get used to it."

I adjust the straps on the left, breathing in his grainy soap and coffee scent, then I move to the other side. I do it all without making any contact with his body whatsoever.

"You okay?" he asks, lowering the volume.

"Very okay."

"You want to have dinner tonight?"

"Yes," I say. "Badly."

"Good." He smiles, and it does things to me.

As I'm headed for the door, he says, "Hey."

He's putting his coat on over his vest.

"Be careful."

"I will," I say. "You, too."

It's a gray morning, warmer and more humid than it has been, and still dusky at 9:oo AM, like the world is stuck in transition.

Not much about the pasture leading up to the Van der Horn farmhouse has changed, including the spelling on the signs. However, the skinny white sway-backed horse is markedly thinner, less white, and more sway-backed than it was six weeks ago.

We enter the property through the giant wooden frame at the start of the dirt driveway with two FBI Suburbans and two trooper vehicles, each containing a cameraman, caravanning behind us. When I see the gang of dogs approaching at a sprint, barking their boxy heads off, I have an instant of déjà vu, and the familiarity is actually comforting.

When we come to a stop and the dust clears, Van der Horn with his stringy hair and unnaturally thin build, is standing on the porch smoking a cigarette.

We are now in the presence of evil.

"Ready?" I ask Bud.

He picks up his shot gun and nods.

"Let's do this then."

I take the warrant and the manila envelope containing the thirty-eight page attachment from the seat between us. As we approach the porch, seven or eight dogs swarm around us, barking and growling and panting. I feel their hot breath on my shins while the aggressive border collie pokes his nose into the back of my leg and nips at the ankles of my jeans.

Bud repositions the shotgun across his chest and yells, "Call them off!"

Van der Horn smirks, which rekindles my long-ago desire to punch him.

Bud lifts the gun and points it at Van der Horn.

"Sir," he yells again over the increasing uproar, "call off your dogs!"

This isn't starting well.

Six FBI agents join us, weapons drawn. Four spread out on either side of Bud and me while the remaining two advance to the porch, within five feet of Van der Horn, who has now lost the smirk, but still takes another drag of his cigarette.

The female, Agent Wicks, tall and slender with a jet black buzz cut, nods to me. She's giving me the go-ahead I'm not sure she's authorized to give. I stuff the warrant inside the envelope and drop it on the ground, then I walk up to Van der Horn, keeping just out of arm's reach.

"Call off your dogs, Mr. Van der Horn," I say, and I'm surprised at how calm it comes out with all the adrenaline pumping through my veins.

"Bite me," he says, and it's dead, void of any emotion, just like his red-rimmed pale blue eyes.

This guy seriously creeps me out.

I step forward and grab the front of his brown hoodie with both hands and yank him off the porch so hard that the cigarette flies from his fingers and his head whips back. I actually hadn't intended to use that much force, but he's much lighter than I could have imagined, maybe 125 or less. He smells like dirty laundry and tobacco with a hint of cat urine. Without much effort, I'm able to twist him around so I can ram my knee into the back of his, and he crumbles to the ground. I get my knee on his lower back and pull one arm behind him a bit more clumsily than usual because I'm still not used to the girth of the vest.

The dogs surround us, not missing a note of their audial assault, and I realize it's about to start. If Van der Horn doesn't take care of them, we'll have to.

He's gasping, and I think he might be struggling, but I'm not sure.

I pull his other arm behind him and I say, like it's me on the ground and him holding me down, "Mr. Van der Horn, please. Please call them off."

"Do what you have to do, Deputy," he says, and as if on cue, one of the dogs lunges, a weapon discharges, and a high-pitched yelping begins, first from the one that got shot, then from a couple of the others. I turn my head to see what happened to the target, but it's gone, and there's no sign of blood.

Rubber bullets.

Two particularly focused dogs are still manically barking, but they're now keeping a safer distance from us. The others have backed way off.

A second and then a third shot are fired and both dogs run off towards the side of the house with their tails between their legs. It's suddenly quiet enough that I can hear my ears ringing. There's still some barking far off, then a few more shots, and finally the barking ceases. I'm assuming some of the ammunition was live.

Wicks kneels down next to us with a nylon twist tie and cuffs Van der Horn.

"You made this harder on yourself than it had to be," she says with what may be genuine sympathy.

"You think I give a shit?" he says, voice kind of thin and raspy.

"No," Wicks says, "I guess I don't."

Together we drag him to his feet, and it's at this point I'm able to see across the yard. Two cameramen, Jason Smith and a guy who looks like he could be Smith's grandfather, are capturing everything.

"What the fuck?" I say to Wicks because she's the closest normal person to me. "What's up with that?"

"Some reality show," she says, nonchalant, almost detached.

I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn't.

"I better not end up on that video," Van der Horn says like he truly believes he's going to be in a position to do something about it if he does.

"At least they could have warned you so you had time to wash your clothes," I say.

"Fuck you, Deputy," he says.

"Do the world a favor and don't fuck anyone, Van der Horn."

We walk him to the nearest SUV under the assumption that the evidence will make him a Federal prisoner, and that's when I see Walt standing there with the manila envelope in his hand, talking to one of the agents.

He makes eye contact briefly then says, "Van der Horn, we're going to give you an opportunity to review the warrant."

"How?" Van der Horn asks. "I'm handcuffed."

"You're an industrious guy. You'll figure it out," Walt says.

We get him settled in the car and Walt puts the envelope on his lap.

"Where's your brother?" I ask.

"Who?"

"The Cushman pilot."

"Oh," Van der Horn says, reviving the smirk. "I think he moved."

In my estimation, that either means we've got a homicide on our hands or we've got a rogue brother hiding out somewhere on the property presenting a significant threat. Neither possibility is going to make this run any smoother.


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

I'm lying face down in shadow on the dirt floor, between a treadmill and a metal shelving unit.

White hot nausea radiates from my gut as I steady my right arm with my left. I take aim and wait for movement on the catwalk above, straining to hear the rattles and clicks and creaks of him trying to unjam the weapon. Then there's the sound of metal sliding against metal. My back muscles tense then spasm.

He's almost got it.

Ferg is somewhere down here with me. He might have been hit. He might think I've been hit.

I picture the gore and the grief because that's what I do.

My eye is trained on the dark area at the right end of the walkway above. A drop of sweat travels slowly down my nose, gets hung up at the end, then drops onto my lip and seeps salty into my mouth.

Someone will be coming soon. Someone had to have heard the shots.

Then there's the gong of the rifle tapping the railing. He's up again.

I still can't see anything, but I remind myself that even when I can, I have to confirm, I have to make sure without any question whatsoever that it's him, that it's not somehow Ferg, or Wicks or Romano. Or Walt.

The black silhouette of the muzzle and then the strap inch into the circle of murky light emanating from the bare bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling.

I hold my breath.

An arm, and a torso, and then a bushy head come into shadowy view.

I've got my confirmation.

I yell out, "Drop the weapon!" with no expectation that he will actually drop the weapon.

He follows the script and whips around, points the rifle in my general direction.

I squeeze the trigger.

The sound of the three amplified 9mm claps ricochets off the metal walls and echos throughout the quonset hut.

**Mistake #1: Mindset**

This should have been our operation, our plan, our directives, and it should have already been underway.

I was frustrated and I was bored, and I just wanted it to be tonight already, to hear his voice the way it sounds when it's only for me, to feel his hands on my body, to smell his skin.

When we first arrived I hadn't been in this headspace, but there had been way too much waiting and shifting around and being told what to do. Team up, break into separate agency huddles, meet with the surveillance guys. We're talking like an hour and a half of nose-picking.

Waiting around for nothing is the devil's playground, or however that goes.

I sat on the edge of Van der Horn's porch pretending to check texts. Hidden behind my aviators, I watched Walt through the brown gauze-effect of stirred-up dust and overcast sky. He was talking to two young troopers, standing with his hand on his hip. I replayed last night, beginning to end, then rewound and played it again. I imagined sending him a text that would make him have to turn away to adjust himself.

If only he had a phone.

Then Ferg joined me, and we stood there together in the yard shifting the dirt around with our feet, not looking at each other, not talking.

**Mistake #2: Judgment**

Ours must have been the shortest straw in the history of short straws because Ferg and I got paired up with FBI Agents Wicks and Romano, who have such raging hard-ons for each other that sharing airspace with them feels almost voyeuristic.

I recognize these things.

Rays of hazy yellow sunlight were breaking through the clouds as the four of us rounded the farmhouse on the west side, weapons drawn.

"We've been here before," I said. "We met the brother. Charles."

Ferg and Romano were up ahead and out of earshot, but Wicks glanced at me, like she couldn't believe I was actually talking.

So I spoke again because that's the kind of mood I was in. "Now that I think about it, he didn't strike me as particularly dangerous. He's not Satan's spawn like the other one."

Granted, my only interaction with Charles was during his delivery of Sunshine the sacrificial pitbull, but when he surrendered her to us there was zero hostility. Based on those twenty seconds, I'd surmised that he didn't seem invested in any of it. He was following orders.

In other words, I was drawing conclusions based on almost no evidence.

"Deputy Moretti," Wicks said, clipped and quiet, "you and I both know any cornered animal is a threat."

She's over six feet tall, and Romano is maybe 5'9". I winced at the involuntary visual—at least they're both unusually attractive.

"I know. I'm just saying I don't think this is his battle."

We ran into some of the fallout from the unnecessary standoff with Van der Horn #1. Two dead pitbulls lay in blood-soaked dirt under the clothesline behind the house, and we found Butch the border collie just outside the sliding door leading into what appeared to be the living room. He must have been the house dog.

"Doesn't matter whose battle it is if he's out here with an M16 and doesn't like the idea of going to prison."

Blah, blah, blah.

**Mistake #3: Attitude**

"Five bucks says it's an AK-47," I said, and Ferg, who was standing maybe ten feet in front of us, looked back over his shoulder at me.

Of course, I didn't believe it would be either one, I was just wrapped up in my own myopic view of pecking order and how often I need to be right in order to maintain some self-respect.

Wicks watched me like she thought I might be trying to start something, and I might have been.

When Ferg turned around and gave me a crinkled brow and the WTF shrug I acted oblivious.

Wicks made eye contact with Romano, ESP-ing him what an idiot I am, but he didn't get the message because he was picturing her naked.

The sky now had that whole Nineteenth Century God's glowing fingers vibe. Dark shadows from the heavens slid across the brown yard and tan fields like puzzle pieces. Faint barks floated over to us on the thick air.

About two hundred yards north of the house was a row of small wooden structures, each with a metal stake driven into the ground in front of it. Only four were occupied by dogs attached by wide metal collars to heavy chains which were in turn attached to the stakes.

A brown female lay lethargic on top of her doghouse, face freshly punctured and scratched, some of the wounds infected and oozing. Her eyes followed us and her tail thumped twice against the wood. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but what difference could it have possibly made. I'm a human in a world where humans do these things.

The two in the middle were probably under a year, still floppy and soft looking. They wagged and whined and tried to get close to us. We pretended to ignore them.

The fourth dog was inside its house and didn't come out.

Wicks led us about thirty feet further out to a huge pit in the ground: the mass grave containing carcasses and disembodied bones and shriveled fur, partially covered in mulch. There was no scent of decomposition whatsoever, just the dusty smell of alfalfa hay and woodchips.

I turned away and nodded towards a windowless quonset hut that hadn't been visible from the road. Without waiting for consensus, I started walking towards it, and believe it or not, they followed.

As any law enforcement officer will tell you, clearing a building is some serious shit, and when the building is a dark tube with an open floor-plan, it's even worse. So when Romano told us how it was going to go, I released the negativity and I listened.

Before entering, the FBI put on their headlamps, and Ferg and I exchanged these defeated looks that I want us both to remove permanently from our repertoire.

Because the hut is crammed to the rims with equipment and contraband, boxes piled seven feet high, and huge shelving structures, it took us forever to complete the search. In addition to two treadmills, we found medical supplies, tools, fifty-five gallon drums containing dubious substances, and four sickly marijuana plants sitting in a dark corner with a burned-out lamp above them. And of course, because I deserved it, we found a box full of Vietnam era military issue M16 rifles.

After checking every other recess, every nook and crawlspace a human could possibly fit, I found a rusty grate in the ground behind a stack of hay. Romano pulled up the grate and shined his light inside. About ten feet down was a damp concrete floor—odd because the rest of the hut either has dirt or rotting wood—but that seemed to be the extent of it. From our vantage point, there didn't appear to be any doorways or passages, and there wasn't a ladder.

"Just a hole in the ground, I guess," Romano said.

Hindsight, of course, is less arrogant and dismissive.

The building cleared, Wicks and Romano went outside to radio their superior officer while Ferg and I did a quick inventory of stuff on the warrant.

Under the dim overhead lighting, we walked back through the building, Ferg taking notes while I called off items.

"Hey," I said, turning to face him. "I'm sorry about this morning."

He didn't respond, didn't even acknowledge that I had spoken, remained fixated on his note-taking.

"I was out of line," I said.

"Yeah," he blurted out, "you were. You mess with people all the time like that, but what, you can't take a little ribbing?"

I nodded. "I know I do, Ferg. I was being a big baby."

His mouth twitched at that, and a dimple showed.

He shifted his eyes to me, hurt and suspicious. "What the hell, Vic?" he said, sounding like me.

"I was embarrassed, Ferg. I felt exposed."

"Exposed? Why?"

"It's stupid," I said. "I went fishing with Walt, and I fell in the lake."

"Really?" He didn't seem sure if he should believe me or not. "Why would that matter?"

I searched his face, but it really did seem to be just a question. Improbable as it sounds, he wasn't reading anything into it.

"Well, if I admit a goofy brown lab knocked me into a lake, I seem physically inept. And if I admit I went fishing with the boss, it looks inappropriate."

I realize at this point I was starting to skirt lying territory, but I'm not a big proponent of telling the truth no matter what.

"Going fishing with Walt is inappropriate?" he said.

No, but sleeping with him afterwards might be.

"Would you go fishing with me?" he asked, not as an invitation, as a curiosity.

"Of course."

"So why does it matter?"

"You're right," I said. "It doesn't. I was being paranoid."

"Okay."

I wasn't sure what he was affirming.

"Then we're good?" I asked.

"Yeah, I guess," he said, returning his attention to the notepad, squinting.

The conversation felt incomplete, but I didn't know where to go from there so I continued the survey.

Four crudely constructed wooden steps led up to a wooden platform about five feet above the dirt floor. I walked up them and across the platform, which was soft in spots from decay.

"Why do you care what I think anyway?" Ferg called over to me. I stopped, turned to him again. In the dim light he was sort of blurry.

I tilted my head the way Rufus does when he's not sure what he's hearing. As much as I'd rather not acknowledge it, I created this, and not just with Ferg, with most people in my life. It's one of my many defense mechanisms: If I don't care about you, you can't hurt me.

I stepped out towards the edge of the platform and said, "Because you're my friend, Ferg, and I want to treat you with respect."

That's when the single unmistakable, ear-jamming crack rang out, and I did exactly what I've been trained to do: I dropped to the ground. But in this case, the ground was five feet below me, and the vest seemed to function like a magnet, pulling me into the first obstacle. My right shoulder struck what I soon discovered was the left handrail of a treadmill, and somehow I was on my back when I landed on the dirt below, knocking the wind out of me.

Staring up at the curved metal ceiling, I started to panic, knowing if I couldn't get some air in me, I'd pass out, and it would be over. Obviously, panic never helps restore respiration, but tell that to someone who can't breathe.

Two more cracks suddenly shattered the quiet, and dirt sprayed over my head, onto my face, into my mouth, and when I finally took a decent breath, up my nose. It took all my resolve to remain still, to not cough or spit.

Then by some incredible wave of good fortune came the clicking and rattling, the creaking and struggling from overhead. His rifle was jammed.

I had time.

My breathing mostly back to normal, or as normal as can be expected while face-to-face with the Grim Reaper, I attempted to roll onto my right side. A crunching sound and a stabbing pain in my neck convinced me to try the other direction.

Once on my stomach, I crawled backwards, biting my bottom lip to stop myself from groaning, inch by inch. I could see him now, crouched down on the metal catwalk, free for the taking. But I was in no condition or position to shoot, and apparently neither was Ferg.

I managed to crawl to the back of the treadmill then into the space between it and one of the shelving units before he stood up again and walked to the far edge of the catwalk, out of sight.

And that's how I ended up here, with the force of the recoil, three times consecutively, sending three consecutive burning bolts of inconceivable pain through my chest and shoulder, and a direct view of the bullet, my bullet, striking his forehead, his unruly hair puffing up, and his body falling backwards to hang halfway off the metal walkway.

When I lower my arm, bone grinds against bone.

A ringing dripping of what must be blood onto the top of the shelves directly underneath the catwalk begins.

I throw up onto the dirt in front of me.


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Agent Tanner is in his early 60s, bald, and unreadable, except I know he doesn't put up with much. That I can read.

He says in his nasal baritone, "Can you tell me what happened." In no way does it resemble a question.

I hold my right arm against my body with my left. Pain pulsates through my shoulder and chest. I could benefit from some defensive body language right now, but it's just not an option.

"I already told that guy what happened," I say, nodding towards Agent Anderson, a slick, skinny dude in a black suit who materialized before I had fully absorbed the stark reality of the situation. Now he's moved on to Ferg, who's leaning back against the side wall of the quonset hut, ghost-complected and dazed, but alive and uninjured.

"I understand that," he says, expressionless. "This won't take long."

"Are you building a case against me or something?" My tone is a lot meeker than I intend.

"Now why would we do that?"

His faded brown eyes hover over me. Apparently, this is an actual question.

"Because I killed a man."

A cold darkness drifts through me, pooling in the expanding empty spaces.

Tanner sucks something through his teeth and examines one of his fingernails, maybe for effect.

"In the version I heard, you returned fire on a suspect you had every reason to believe was trying to kill you and your partner. Is that not accurate?"

"It's accurate."

The sun is high and in my eyes. It seems abnormally bright even with the gray clouds surrounding it. Sprinkled with dirt and slightly mangled, my Ray Bans are somehow still in my shirt pocket, but I can't take them out for fear that whatever has become detached on the right side of my body will clatter to the ground if I let go. Plus it just hurts like hell to move.

"What's the story on the arm?" Tanner asks.

"Nothing. I just hit it on one of the treadmills."

"I'll assume that's an understatement." He pulls a small notepad out of the pocket of his black trousers and flips through it. "If you can't move it, chances are something's broken."

"I can move it," I say. It would just cause me to lose consciousness.

He puts on a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses, then writes something.

Agents in plastic gloves are walking in and out of the hut like worker ants. No one looks at me.

"Should I surrender my sidearm?" I ask.

"Not to me you shouldn't," he says, seeming only half aware of me. "You're the Sheriff's responsibility."

My stomach tightens.

I realize there's no keeping this from Walt, and I know what it would look like if I asked Tanner to help me try, but I'm considering it anyway.

"You and Deputy Ferguson went up onto the catwalk following the shooting," he says, looking at his notepad. I think he might be faking me out, though, reading a blank page to make a point about how serious this is, like I don't already know.

"Yes," I say.

"And you attempted to resuscitate the suspect."

I'm feeling a little lightheaded and I want to sit down, but there's nowhere to sit.

"I already went over all this with what's-his-face," I say.

He looks down at the blood on my pants and on my left hand and sleeve.

"And now you're going over it with me."

He takes out his iPhone. I think he's going to turn the recorder off, but he just looks at it and puts it back in his chest pocket.

I probably shouldn't have agreed to be recorded.

"I felt for a pulse, then we pulled him back onto the walkway. His head had been hanging over."

My memory is plagued by images of obscene amounts of blood essentially pouring from the catwalk onto the top of the shelving unit. It was already starting to dribble over the sides.

"And you say there was a pulse," he clarifies.

"Yes."

"At what pulse point?"

"Carotid."

"It wasn't radial you mentioned before?" he asks, flipping back through the notebook.

My thoughts are becoming jumbled, and there's a low level buzzing in my ears. It's possible I'm becoming confused. Maybe I did say something different.

But if I had, it wouldn't be in Tanner's notebook, would it?

"I don't think so," I say. "In the neck. I checked the pulse in the neck."

He's still reading something and doesn't seem to be paying full attention to my responses. He might have already decided.

"Then you performed chest compressions."

From the direction of the house, two, or maybe even three vehicles are approaching in a cloud of dust.

"Ferg . . . Deputy Ferguson performed chest compressions."

He looks at my arm, then back at the notebook.

"For how long?"

"I'm not sure. Not long. Maybe a minute."

"After which you and Deputy Ferguson determined the suspect was deceased," he says.

"Yes."

"And how did you determine that?"

"A bullet went through his brain."

"But he had a pulse when you first got there."

"Yes. And then he didn't."

I'd like to skip this part.

I'd like to travel into the future somewhere, beyond all the confusion and the soul sickness, though I have no way of knowing how far forward I'd have to go to be free. It's only just started.

One of the vehicles is the Bronco, and the other is one of the black SUVs, which pulls to the other side of the hut.

"Then what did you do?" Tanner asks, watching Walt get out of the truck and walk towards us, long strides, ass-kicking mode.

"I told Ferg to go find Wicks and Romano."

"They were part of your team."

"Yes, but we'd cleared our area," I say. "We'd already searched and cleared the building." Damn straight I'm defending them. We're on the same side now.

"Where were they? Do you know?" He nods at Walt, who joins us, hand on hip, gears turning.

He looks down at Tanner then at me, noticing my arm, noticing the blood. He's got some stubble. I haven't seen that in a while.

"You questioning my deputy?" Walt says.

In one mental frame, I see him on top of me, feel the warmth and the weight of him, while in another bigger, more pressing frame I see blood, blood, and more blood, smell the metal and the remorse.

"That I am, sir," Tanner says, still deadpan, still in control.

Walt's chest is rising and falling. He stares at Tanner, but what can he do? I agreed to be questioned, and he must know that.

"You okay, Vic?" he asks, softening and transferring his attention to me. "What's up with your arm?"

"Nothing," I say. "I'm fine. Ferg's over there."

Our eyes meet, and I want to turn away, to deny him access, but he's telling me something the way he does lately. He's communicating with me, and as of this particular hour on this particular day, I still want to hear it.

"We'll just wrap this up, okay, Deputy?" Tanner says.

I nod.

Walt pauses a little longer, watching Tanner, stretching his fingers at his sides, then squinting far out across the fields before he walks over to Ferg.

"You were telling me where you understood Wicks and Romano to be."

"They'd been called away by another team," I say.

"So they didn't hear the shots."

"No, I think they did. When Deputy Ferguson got outside, they were there, they were responding."

Tanner closes his notebook and slips it back into his pocket then removes his readers. He makes direct eye contact with me for the first time.

"Why didn't you radio for help?"

"Because it all happened so fast," I say.

The sky has become overcast again.

"And we don't have radios."


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Walt offers us his keys.

"Head back up front," he says. "I'll see you up there soon."

Neither of us makes a move to take them, me mostly because I can't, and Ferg because he's trapped in his head with some bad company. His color is coming back, though.

"I'd rather walk," I say, looking to Ferg for confirmation.

"Yeah," Ferg says. "Thanks, Sheriff, but it's not far."

I'm worried Walt's about to confront Tanner, or hunt down Wicks and Romano, who I haven't seen since the worker ants arrived. I tell him it's not their fault and that Tanner was fine, but he's in that remote, inward place, and I don't think he hears me.

We all know this would be very different now if he'd been with us, if we hadn't been split up into unfamiliar situations with unclear leadership. Life would have been free to continue along the same idyllic path it was on this morning—or mostly idyllic with a few minor but manageable anxieties mixed in.

"There's nothing so bad that beating the shit out of a fed won't make worse," I say. "I have some experience with that."

He gives me a distracted half smile. "It'll be okay," he says.

He watches a huge raptor fly low over the long prairie grass behind the property.

"I have no idea what that means," I say.

"It means I'll see you soon," he says without taking his eyes off the bird.

Ferg and I go back the way we came.

The actual puppy mill is maybe three hundred yards further east of where we were, and in some ways I want to see it, to witness the evil, but some rational part of me knows that whatever wickedness we find over there won't dilute the concentrated truth of what I've done.

As we're passing the row of doghouses, a couple of Humane Society workers, girls in their late teens wearing long-sleeved HSUS T-shirts are sitting cross-legged in the dirt. There's a light breeze now and as a result, an overpowering stench of dog poop. Ferg points at a massive pile of fecal matter we miraculously missed the first time through.

One of the girls is talking to the injured brown female, who is sitting on the ground facing her and listening. The two floppy pups are climbing all over the other girl. The fourth dog is still inside its house, and it occurs to me that it might be dead.

"That was crazy, right?" I say.

"What was crazy?" Ferg says.

"That stuff back there. In there."

"Yup," he says.

I can't fault him for not wanting to talk about it, but at the same time, he's in this with me, and I can't let him leave me alone out here with it, either.

"How much did you see?" I try to sound nonchalant, like I'm not measuring or qualifying anything, I'm just asking.

"All of it. That first shot whizzed by my ear. I thought it was over."

"You really thought that?" I ask.

He looks at me like my stupidity is working his last nerve. "You didn't?"

I don't know if I did. It's what I keep asking myself: Did I truly think . . . did I honestly believe my life was in immediate danger?

"The second and third shots hit the ground maybe three feet from my head," I say.

"And you're saying you didn't think you were about to die?"

"I'm not saying anything, Ferg. I'm just talking."

"My life flashed before my eyes, Vic," he says. His words are drenched in disdain. I don't know what or who he's mad at. It could be me, I guess, but it doesn't really feel like it is.

"It actually flashed before your eyes?" I ask, knowing full well that I might get my head bitten off. "Like you saw episodes of your life?"

He stops walking. It's a relief because the motion has been causing a stabbing sensation in my shoulder on top of the constant ache throughout the entire upper right quadrant of my body.

Ferg crinkles his brow, shakes his head.

"Yeah," he says. "Sort of. I saw my mom and dad and our house, and my horse Arrow."

I didn't even know he had a horse.

"And this girl I always meant to ask out."

"There's a girl?" I ask.

He closes his eyes. "Now Vic? Really?"

"No. Not now. Sorry."

The same bird glides upwards from the field just behind the grave.

"He shot at us," Ferg says. "Three times."

"I know," I say. I'm entirely aware that I'm pushing it when I add, "But minutes had passed. When he got up again, I don't know what he was planning on doing."

"It doesn't matter what he was planning. He pointed a rifle at you."

"But I'm pretty sure he couldn't see me, and he didn't fire it."

"Are you actually questioning whether or not what you did was right?" he asks, voice cracking, baby cheeks reddening.

"No, no, no. I mean, I get that something had to be done. It seemed like it was probably him or us."

"Probably?"

"Yeah. I just don't know what he really would have done. Or if the rifle was even really unjammed."

"So you're saying you should have waited until he fired on your stationary injured ass before shooting at him?"

"I'm not injured."

"Whatever."

"Deadly force," I say.

"What?"

"Imminent danger requires deadly force. We have to assume every time we fire our weapon at a suspect that it could result in the suspect's death."

"So?"

"So I'm just saying was this imminent danger if I didn't even know if he'd really unjammed the rifle?"

"You can't be serious," he says.

If it wasn't me he was disgusted with earlier, it is now.

When we reach the truck, we find Bud with Jason the young cameraman, who clearly has serious comprehension problems, as well as a long-haired, athletic looking guy in a shirt like the girls were wearing. Behind Jason is a woman who seems to be asking them questions.

We keep our distance from the camera, but neither of us bothers to remind Bud we've been forbidden to be filmed while on duty. I'll just add Jason's name to the growing list of people who need to be protected from Walt.

Ferg starts ripping open the velcro straps on the side of his vest, and when Bud comes over a few minutes later, he does the same thing. I just stand there holding my arm.

"It's a reality show," Bud says. I'm not sure if he's unaware of the shooting or if he's trying to show me some respect by not asking about it. "It's funny. I said it wasn't a reality show, but it actually is."

"Yeah, that's hilarious," I say.

He doesn't glare like he's putting a Dominican hex on me in response to my sarcasm, which is highly unusual, so I'm guessing he knows.

"That guy's in charge of all these missions to save animals. They travel around the U.S. doing it, and now they have a film crew."

"Huh," I say.

"What channel?" Ferg asks.

"Animal World or something," Bud says.

"Animal Planet," I correct. He still doesn't lash me with his eyes.

An endless stream of people in the same Humane Society T-shirts are walking back and forth between the mobile vet unit parked in the front yard and the barns. On the way here, they have dogs of all sizes in their arms, all of them with matted fir and ribs showing; on the way back to the barns, they carry the experience, and it shows.

"Seriously? How is it about the animals if they're making a TV show?" I say before I remember I have no room to talk. About anything. Ever.

Bud shrugs.

Then he says, "Oh. And the guy, the star of the show, he knows the weird PETA lady."

"Really? How?"

"I guess she worked with him. They were both part of the show. Something happened, I don't know. But he's got a restraining order against her."

"You're kidding," I say. "For what?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know. You can ask him. Kind of creepy, though, since she's here, or at least she was here a few days ago."

"Yeah," I say. We probably need to track her down.

"Two more days here they said."

"Really? Why so long?" I ask.

"It's unbelievable back there. Rows and rows of cages stacked six high. These dogs don't even look like dogs. Fifty-five gallon drums filled with carcasses. There were two full when I left and they'd barely got started."

They both have their vests off now and in their places are vest-shaped wet spots.

"What's wrong with your arm?" Bud asks.

"Nothing," I say. "I just ran into something."

Ferg rolls his eyes. That's the second time today. He's lucky I'm disabled.

"Bullshit," Bud says. "That arm's all fucked up." Ricky Ricardo with a foul mouth.

"It's not my arm. It might be my shoulder."

"Same thing. Take off your vest. If it's dislocated, I might be able to stick it back in."

"Really?" I say, like he's just offered to write up my reports for a week.

I may just be saved yet.

It takes both of them to help me get the vest off. The pain is an eleven, and when I have to move my left arm, temporarily leaving my right arm to fend for itself, I get that bleary, swirly feeling like I'm about to faint.

Once it's off and I'm standing there, left arm back on the job, they both just stare at me.

"What?" I say. "Come on. Let's do this."

Bud tilts his head to the side and Ferg just stands there stunned.

"That's no dislocated shoulder," Bud says.

"Oh fuck. What?"

"Uh," Ferg starts. "Your right shoulder is like five inches lower than your left."

"Actually," Bud says, "it's pretty disgusting. That's some serious bruising."

"And a really gross lump," Ferg says.

"Okay, can we skip the commentary? What's wrong with it?"

I try to look down at it, but my neck is stiff and sore. I can see some purple spreading into my shoulder, but that's it.

"If I had to guess," Bud says, "it's a broken collar bone."

"Or there's an alien in there," Ferg says, and they both start laughing like it's the funniest moronic immature insensitive unhelpful joke they've ever heard.

Looking over my head, Bud says, "There's Walt. We'll ask him."

"No," I say, panicking. "Button my shirt for me."

They both back away from me. "Please." I turn to Ferg. He's more invested in me than Bud. "Ferg, please."

"What's the big deal, Vic?" he says in almost a whisper. "He'll find out at some point."

"He'll find out now," Bud says, not trying to lower his voice at all.

"Find out what?" Walt says.


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

It turns out Ferg has some mad first aid skills he's been keeping from us.

He makes a sling out of a triangle bandage and ties a second one around my ribs to hold my arm tight against my body. Although the pain is far from gone, I do feel more intact.

Having use of my left arm again gives me grand ideas about my capabilities, so when Walt suggests someone drive me to the hospital, I object.

"It's not safe to drive with one arm," he says.

"People with one arm drive with one arm."

He stares at me.

Ferg and Bud are over by the porch talking to a couple of troopers.

I'm guessing Walt doesn't know what to say or maybe he doesn't know how to say it without letting on that he doesn't know who I am anymore.

Homicide, justified or not, changes relationships.

"I'm screwing up left and right, huh?" I say.

"Vic," he says, the way you talk to someone when everything is so twisted and damaged you don't have a clue where to start.

He looks like he feels sorry for me.

"Don't do that, Walt."

"Do what?" he says, but he doesn't wait for an answer.

He takes my left arm, carefully, and guides me towards my truck.

"Keys?" he says.

"You have to stay here, don't you?" I ask.

"I'm not going anywhere."

The keys are in the right pocket of my jacket, which is draped over my shoulders. I try to reach across, but soon discover that it's physically impossible. I can't stand the idea of him doing it for me.

With one hand he touches my cheek. It's such a shock out here in the open with other people around that I flinch. He's already managed to extract the keys with his other hand.

"Why don't you sit down?" he says, opening the driver's side door.

"Why? Are you firing me?"

"Vic," he says again, the same way.

"Breaking up with me? It was one night. I don't need to sit down for that."

I realize I'm about to lose my shit, and that only makes me feel angrier and sadder.

He holds his hands out, offering to help me up.

"No fucking way," I say. No thank you would have been more polite, but seriously, who am I trying to impress at this point?

Upper body strength has never been an issue for me, so I am able to lift myself pretty easily into the seat using the handle on the upper inside of the door frame. My balance is off, though. You'd be surprised how much stability two arms offer.

He looks out towards the road then down at his boots.

"Just get it over with," I say.

He puts a hand on my knee then removes it.

"I, uh . . . ." He massages his stubble then slides his hand around to the back of his neck. "I'm sorry I was such an asshole back there," he says.

"What?"

"You needed me, and I was lost in my own head."

"I didn't need you, Walt," I say.

There's that humiliating weight in my throat and that tugging somewhere behind my nose. I have a strong urge to punch something.

"I was thinking about me when I should have been thinking about you."

He's not giving up.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say, though I do. I'm being dishonest, and I don't care.

He puts his hands on my legs again, one on the side of each thigh, and he steps closer.

"It scared me when I realized what happened in there," he says, very matter-of-fact.

He squints, gives me an awkward smile.

"Yeah, well," I say. "I have a job that could get me killed. Like everybody else in the world, I could die pretty much any day."

You think I don't know how insensitive that is?

"I know that, Vic."

He's pausing, he's thinking. I have no desire to hurry him up.

"I didn't realize how bad you were hurt."

"It's not bad," I say. "It's like the most common broken bone."

"I mean I didn't realize anything was broken," he says, "because I wasn't thinking about you like I should have been."

"Okay, Walt, I get it. Thanks. Can I just go now?"

He breathes out hard and takes his hat off and throws it onto the seat behind me.

He scratches his head.

"I want to tell you something," he says, and he moves closer again.

I slide back onto the seat a little, away from him.

"Don't, Walt," I say, shaking my head. "Please. Don't tell me anything right now."

He's searching my eyes, but the answer isn't there. I don't know where it is, but I know he won't find it there.

"Okay," he says, palms up, surrendering. "But you're not screwing up left and right, as you put it."

"Two days in a row I got myself into life-threatening situations. Could I look any needier?"

"You really think that's what's on my mind when I consider the past twenty-four hours? That you've been slightly more vulnerable than usual?"

"Vulnerable," I say.

"We were both vulnerable last night," he whispers, though nobody is anywhere near enough to hear us. "It wouldn't have happened if we weren't."

"And Ferg and I were vulnerable today. Now someone's dead."

He nods. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I killed a human being, Walt. What the fuck?"

"You saved at least two lives by doing that."

"Don't act like I'm a hero," I say, and my voice rises and cracks. "Don't do that to me."

I want to just roll up in a ball and go to sleep.

"I won't, Vic. I promise."


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

I'm standing in the hospital pharmacy wearing a figure-8 clavicle splint with a heavy-duty arm sling and trying to process the elevator music rendition of "Animal" when my phone rings.

It's the Sheriff's Department.

I consider not answering, but I think technically I'm still on duty.

"Hey, Ruby," I say, maybe as some sort of defense strategy, I'm not sure.

"Vic."

It's not Ruby.

"Walt."

"You still at the hospital?"

"I'm just leaving. Bud's getting the truck."

"That was fast," he says.

"Yup. That's Durant, Wyoming for you."

"What'd they tell you?"

"Displaced mid-shaft clavicle fracture. Three month recovery unless I get a metal plate and some screws, in which case I could be back out on the job in four to six weeks."

The stabilizing contraptions have further restricted my movements, but I'm in considerably less pain than I was in earlier. Of course, the narcotics help with that. As some weird byproduct of the readjustment, though, I am now having trouble taking full breaths.

"Wow," he says. "But that's what we thought, I guess."

"Yup."

The pharmacist holds up the white paper bag to show me then puts it on his high counter and returns to the drug realm.

"My prescription's ready, so . . . ."

"I'm coming over, Vic. With dinner."

I freeze, stare at the little bag on the high counter.

"Vic?"

"Yeah. Uh . . . ." I sound like him. "I'm pretty tired actually."

"I'm sure you are," he says. "I'll see you in twenty minutes."

He hangs up.

"Fuck."

A respectable-looking elderly woman in a floral dress and white tights shakes her head at me. You'd think the Glock on my belt and the blood on my jeans would make her think twice about openly judging me.

"Sorry," I say, sliding the phone back into my pocket then grabbing the bag, all with my left hand.

The parking lot is slick with fresh rain, and the cold air smells of wet asphalt.

I meet Bud at the curb, and I'm grateful to him for not making a big production of it. He asks if I need help, and he seems to already know what I'm going to say, and he doesn't push it. I'm still able to lift myself onto the seat using the handle, and though it does take me a few passes, I get the seatbelt on without any assistance.

I spend most of the drive watching the dusky, damp world out the window and trying to empty my mind. That doesn't sound so unappealing to me anymore.

As we turn onto my street, Bud says, "I don't get how they let you stand around out there for two hours without getting you medical care."

"Maybe I was hiding it pretty well."

"You weren't." He glances over at me. "That would never happen in Cheyenne."

"As you will soon discover, Bud, Absaroka County exists in a parallel first aid universe. Walt stitched up a gunshot wound with fishing wire."

"For real? Is the person okay?"

"Yeah. Well, no, not really, but it has nothing to do with that."

I decide against telling him it was Branch so as not to frighten him unnecessarily.

When we pull up to the house, the Bronco is already in the driveway.

"Uh-oh," Bud says. "That can't be good."

"You think they're bringing me up on charges?"

He looks at me like he doesn't know how to respond, and I'm not sure if it's because yes, that's exactly what he thinks, or no, the idea of that never crossed his mind and he's mulling it over. But I don't ask, I just get out of the truck carefully to meet my fate.

It's close to dark. Per usual, the outside lights aren't on, so when Walt walks over to me carrying a brown paper bag, I can barely see his face under the brim of his hat. He smells clean, and he's wearing a T-shirt under his jacket.

I don't know what possesses me, but I reach up and touch his face. It's smooth.

"You shaved."

He leans down and kisses me.

The softness of his lips, the warmth, the proximity have an effect on me similar to the first dose of Vicodin at that hospital. It's perplexing to me that I am able to feel what I feel after being so sure a few hours ago that everything was over for my career, possibly for me, and most likely for us. In truth, I'm not even sure now the extent to which any of those fears are founded.

"Are you here because they're coming after me?" I ask.

"Vic, I'm here because this is where I need to be. It's where I want to be."

He takes my left hand, runs his thumb over my knuckles, squeezes my fingers gently.

"Tanner believes you did what you were trained to do, and as far as he's concerned, it's over. The only way any of this will come up again is if the family files a complaint."

"Will they?"

"Unlikely," he says. "The brother's on his way to Denver in federal custody, and there doesn't seem to be much other family. A sister in Kansas, I think."

I'm not convinced that Tanner has any reason to be up front with Walt, but I say, "Okay," then, "I have to return Rufus."

"I'll come with you," he says.

As we're approaching the front door, once again in darkness, I say, "I know. A timer."

"I brought one," he says as if he's making amends for bugging me about it in the first place. "I'll put it in tonight."

Rufus must know Maggie and Duke are home because he spins around in circles when I open the door. He normally just wiggles and wags.

Without any prompting, Walt puts the dog bowls, the food, and the rawhides in Rufus's canvas bag. Then he picks up the dog bed and puts it under his other arm.

Before we hit their front walkway, I crouch down, and it hurts. I hug Rufus with one arm, and I whisper next to his ear, "You're a good friend," then I kiss him on the muzzle. He whines a little, like he's feeling it, too.

Maggie answers the door in a house dress, and Rufus immediately starts wiggling and smiling.

"Hi, buddy," Maggie says, scratching his ears. "We missed you so much."

She looks up at me and then at Walt, confused.

"Vic, honey, what happened?" she says.

"I fell at work. It looks worse than it is," I tell her. "Maggie, this is Walt."

"I know who he is," she says, sort of ogling him. "Nice to finally meet you, Sheriff."

"Pleased to meet you, Maggie," he says with a smile that makes the ogling understandable.

She takes the bag from him and we follow her into the house. Walt puts the bed down in the living room where the 55" flat panel is on some home improvement show.

On our way out, Maggie gives me a mug with a pheasant on it that says Welcome to South Dakota.

"Let me know if you need help with anything while you're healing," she says.

"Thanks, Maggie. I will," I say.

It takes me forever to get changed, mostly because removing boots and tight jeans is close to impossible with one arm. Though as I discovered earlier, putting tight jeans back on is infinitely more difficult. After using the bathroom in the hospital, I actually had to have a nurse zip and button them for me, which is why I have no intention of wearing anything but sweats until I'm at least half way back to normal.

I'm wearing a tank top under the splint, but without Walt's help, I won't be able to change it, and there's no way in hell I'm asking for help.

Back downstairs, he has dinner laid out on the coffee table: grilled cheese sandwiches, apple slices, pretzels, and Diet Coke.

I take another Vicodin in the kitchen then sit on the couch, rearranging myself multiple times until I find a position that allows me to breathe and produces the least amount of pain.

"Thanks for doing this," I say. "No beer?"

"I'm pretty sure the bottle says no beer." He sits down next to me. "It's all stuff you can eat with one hand and no assistance whatsoever."

I pick up half a sandwich and take a bite.

"Did you make these?" I ask.

"I did. And I cut the apples. The pretzels came in a bag."

"I'm sorry about earlier."

He leans against the arm of the couch and turns, so he's facing me, one leg up on the seat cushion. He's taken off his boots.

"It was a traumatic experience," he says. "It is for anyone."

"You didn't ask me what happened."

"I know. I was overcompensating, trying not to treat you different from the way I treat Ferg and Bud."

"You would've let them tell their side first. You would have made sure they knew you had their back."

He nods. "I would have. That's what I should have done for you. I let my feelings for you get in the way, and made your problem about me. I know I do that. I'm not proud of it."

He gives me that half smile.

"I do it, too. It's hard to stop," I say. "Henry's girlfriend is really good at not being a self-absorbed a-hole. She's my model for better behavior."

"Henry's pretty good at it, too," he says.

After he sets up the light timer, I show him how Netflix works then we watch the first two episodes of _Breaking Bad_. Though I don't expect him to admit it, I'm pretty sure he realizes that he's been underestimating what TV has to offer.

It takes me forever to brush my teeth and perform my nightly ritual, half of which is impossible.

When I come out of the bathroom, Walt is on the bed, leaning against the headboard on the side that used to be mine, reading a copy of _Lonesome Dove_ he must have found in the bookshelf downstairs. He's wearing his jeans and nothing else, not even his belt. One of his long legs is bent up, and the other is stretched out. Despite my current physical and emotional state, it's a staggeringly arousing site.

His clothes are piled neatly on the chair in the corner, and his boots are on the floor in front of it.

"You've read that, right?" I say, turning off the overhead light.

I have this funky lava lamp I got for Christmas a million years ago, and I turn that on. It sets a mood I have no business setting in my current condition.

"I haven't," he says.

"How is that possible?"

I pull an extra pillow out of the closet, then another and a couple of pillowcases. He gets up and starts putting the pillowcases on for me. Sean never would have done that, not because he was a jerk, but because he doesn't naturally think that way.

"It's really good?" he says.

"Yeah. I've read it like four times."

He starts arranging the pillows to create a barrier to protect me from rolling onto my shoulder in the night.

"You read a book about cowboys four times?" he says. His hair is all messy and hanging down over his forehead.

"Maybe I had a subconscious thing about cowboys," I say. We exchange an R-rated look.

It's sick really. As shitty as I feel overall, I still can't help flirting shamelessly with him. I probably should type SEX WITH BROKEN COLLARBONE into Google to make sure.

When I'm all settled in the pillow support system, he straddles my torso with his legs and puts his arms in push-up position so that he's looking down at me. Then he lowers his head and kisses me, slow and sexy.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says.

"You have to get over that. You will hurt me, and I'll hurt you, whether or not we mean to."

"I just meant I don't want to put weight on your broken bone."

"I know what you meant," I say.

He starts moving backwards, first kissing my chin, then my neck, then he skips over the splint and the sling and lands lightly at my belly button, all without touching me anywhere else.

He sits back on my thighs, without giving me all of his weight.

"Does that hurt?"

"No," I say. "But heavy breathing hurts, so nothing too intense."

He kisses my stomach and runs both hands down my sides to the waistband of my sweats and hooks his fingers over the elastic. He pulls them down slightly and licks just inside my hipbone.

"Holy shit. What are you doing?"

He licks the other side. "You want me to explain it to you?" he says, messing with me in the way that makes me want him desperately, even with a fractured clavicle and the quonset hut hanging over my head.

I run the fingers of my left hand through his hair, and let him continue for about as long as I can stand it, then I say, "Come here."

He moves up next to me, hand on my thigh, and I reach down and touch him, over his boxers.

"Does that mean you want me?" I say.

"It does, but the mechanics of it might be a little difficult."

"I want you to make love to me."

"Are you sure?" he asks as he removes his underwear.

It takes some trial and error and negotiating, but we make it work.

"That's what it is," he says, starting, his hand on my stomach.

"What what is?"

I'm trying to keep my breathing shallow.

"This," he says.

His hand slides up and down my stomach, in rhythm.

"Making love," he says.

"I know it is."


End file.
